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to precede him. The two were radiant tonight, with eyes shining in anticipation of the performance and hair braided into delicate spirals atop their heads. He gave Isabella a quick peck on the cheek as she passed.
    Her face lit at his attention. "You are in fine spirits tonight, Quintus."
    A few steps above, Octavia turned to call over her shoulder. "Quintus, tell me there is not going to be some vulgar competition here tonight, in addition to the play."
    Cato laughed and tightened his toga to climb the stairs. "Fear not, Mother. I am simply a boy on holiday after too much time indoors with an ill-tempered tutor."
    Octavia shook her head and continued upward. She was aware of his proclivity for competitive entertainment. He was, after all, a Roman, raised on lust and blood. Indeed, he would have rather been at the arena, but the new gladiators had just arrived and would not perform for another two days.
    They cleared the stairs and stood above the highest gallery of the theater, gazing down into the middle tier of twenty rows, accessible by vaulted corridors at the side of the building. Below the middle tier a covered gallery curved around the half-circle, separating it from the lowest tier for slaves and the poor, and providing special box seating for the magistrates whose generosity sponsored the event. Far below, the orchestra seating was reserved for aristocrats.
    Taken in all at once, it was a spectacular sight. The five thousand seats had nearly filled, and the citizens had arrived in their best clothes, melting the marble theater into a sea of white, with red and blue and gold sashes weaving and twisting through the bright sea like languid, colorful fish.
    Cato put a hand on his mother's back and guided her to a bank of empty seats.
    "Oh!" Isabella pointed. "There is Portia! And Lucius!" She waved frantically, and her older sister smiled and nodded. The two joined them a moment later. Cato slapped his quiet brother-in-law's back in greeting, kissed Portia's cheeks, and the group squeezed into a near-empty row.
    As they sat, the hum of the waiting audience increased. Cato searched for the cause, and saw Gnaeus Nigidius Maius had entered from the side corridor and crossed to a private box at the side, where nearly everyone in the theater would be able to see him. Cato fought to hold onto his mood of frivolity.
    Something about that man drove ice down his back and fire into his veins.
    The curtain hiding the two-story façade at the back of the stage soon dropped into the trench and the performance began—a typical one, with the itinerant actors performing the familiar roles of Macus the Jester, Bucco the pot-bellied simpleton, and Dossenus the trickster. Behind them, on the free-standing scaenae frons, the two-story façade, marble statues of the honored gens Holconii watched the proceedings, mute spectators from an era now past. Their family had been the most prominent in Pompeii and had renovated the theater as a gift to the town.
    The play failed to capture Cato's attention. Instead, his eyes continued to travel to the seats where Maius held court, whether with petitioners or family members Cato could not tell at this distance.
    At a break in the performance, Cato stood. "I am going to walk in the quadriporticus. " He glanced at his family. "Anyone care to join me?"
    Portia stood at once. "I must stretch my legs." His sister hated confined spaces. Cato held out a hand. "Then let's go for a run."
    She batted his hand away. "A stroll will do."
    They left the others in their seats to gossip and socialize, descended the stairs, and circled around the theater to the colonnaded grassy enclosure. It had once been a palaestra, the city's main field for athletic training and fitness, with the covered porticoes surrounding it providing shady areas for more academic instruction. But a larger palaestra had since been built, out near the amphitheater, and this one had been given over to the training of gladiators. Still, the