Roads from Rome | Page 7

absence as an excuse was ominous. Everyone knew that he
dictated her social relations. Terentia had been implacable since that
amusing winter when Clodia had spread a net for Cicero. For her own
sex Clodia had the hawk's contempt for sparrows, but if Caesar as well
as Cicero were to withdraw from her arena, she might as well prepare
herself for the inverted thumbs of Rome.
On her list of acceptances, outside of her own sisters, who had won
intellectual freedom in the divorce courts, she found the names of only
two women--virtuous Hortensia, who was proud of her emancipated
ideas, and Marcia, who was enjoying her husband's Cyprian business as
much as the rest of the world. Men, on the other hand, bachelors and
divorces, abounded. Catullus, luckily, was still in Verona, nursing his
dull grief for that impossible brother. But she was glad to be assured
that his friend, Rufus Caelius, would come. If Terentia and Tullia had
tried to poison the mind of Cicero's protege against her, obviously they
had not succeeded. He was worth cultivating. His years in Asia Minor
had made a man of the world out of a charming Veronese boy and he
was already becoming known for brilliant work at the bar. The house
he had just bought faced the southern end of her own garden and gave
evidence alike of his money and his taste.

And yet, in spite of Caelius's connections, he was still too young to
wield social power, and it was with intense chagrin that Clodia realised
that his was the most distinguished name upon her dinner list.
Indifferent to the opinion of the world as long as she could keep her
shapely foot upon its neck, she dreaded more than anything else a loss
of the social prestige which enabled her to seek pleasure where she
chose. Was this fear at last overtaking her swiftest pace? Her secretary,
watching her, prepared himself for one of the violent storms with which
all her servants were familiar. But at this moment a house slave came in
to ask if she would see Lucretius. "Him and no one else," she answered
curtly, and the Greekling slipped thankfully out as the curtains were
drawn aside to admit a man, about thirty-five years old, whose face and
bearing brought suddenly into the fretful room a consciousness of a
larger world, a more difficult arena. Clodia smiled, and her beauty
emerged like the argent moon from sullen clouds. An extraordinary
friendship existed between this woman who was the bawd of every
tongue in Rome, from Palatine to Subura, and this man whose very
name was unknown to nine-tenths of his fellow-citizens and who could
have passed unrecognised among most of the aristocrats who knew his
family or of the literary men who had it from Cicero that he was at
work on a magnum opus. Cicero was Lucretius's only close friend, and
supposed he had also read every page of Clodia's life, but not even he
guessed that a chance conversation had originated a friendship which
Clodia found unique because it was sexless, and Lucretius because,
within its barriers, he dared display some of his vacillations of purpose.
The woman who was a prey of moods seemed to understand that when
he chose science as his mistress he had strangled a passion for poetry;
and that when he had determined to withdraw from the life of his day
and generation and to pursue, for humanity's sake, that Truth which
alone is immortal beyond the waxing and waning of nations, he had
violated a craving to consecrate his time to the immediate service of
Rome. And he, in his turn, who could penetrate beyond the flaming
ramparts of the world in his search for causes, had somehow discovered
beyond this woman's deadly fires a cold retreat of thought, where all
things were stripped naked of pretence.
Their intercourse was fitful and unconventional. Clodia was

accustomed to Lucretius's coming at unexpected hours with unexpected
demands upon her understanding. He even came, now and then, in
those strange moods which Cicero said made him wonder whether the
gods had confused neighbouring brews and ladled out madness when
they meant to dip from the vat of genius. At such times he might go as
abruptly as he came, leaving some wild sentence reechoing behind him.
But at all times they were amazingly frank with each other. So now
Clodia's eyes met his calmly enough as he said without any preface: "I
have come to answer your note. I prefer that my wife should keep out
of your circle. You used to have doves about you, who could protect a
wren, but they are fluttering away now and your own plumage is
appalling." With the phrase his eyes became conscious of