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of Rome outside the walls than within. And where was all this excess population coming from? Certainly not from an increasing birth rate. In fact, many old families were dying out from lack of interest. The fertility of the Caecilii Metelli was a distinct exception.
    No, Rome was filling up with peasants from the countryside and freed slaves. The peasants, once the backbone of the community, had been forced to sell their lands, bankrupted by huge, inefficient plantations worked by cheap slave labor, another ill my class had visited upon the Republic. And the slaves were themselves the loot of our endless foreign wars. The unfortunates who ended up on the plantations or in the mines were worked to death, but many were used for less arduous service in Rome, and few of them remained slaves for life. Instead, they were manumitted; and within a generation, two at the most, their descendants had full rights of citizenship.
    In a street near the cattle market I saw a pompous, self-importantsenator parading with his troop of clients behind him. Actually, some of them were in front, clearing the way for the great man. There must have been a hundred of them, and that was one reason for the proliferation of slave manumissions. One way to show off your importance was to be seen with a large
clientela,
and freed slaves automatically became your clients, bound by ties of duty and attendance. Really rich men had thousands. To top it all, I happened to know that that senator (he shall remain nameless; his sensitive descendants are very powerful these days) was himself the grandson of a freed slave.
    I wander. I do that a great deal. In my youth I detested all the old bores who were forever lamenting the degeneracy of the times and the low estate to which the Republic had fallen. Now that I am old, I rather enjoy it.
    In the cattle market itself I walked among the pens and cages and was very careful where I stepped. The air was redolent of the massed livestock and raucous with their bleats, bellows, cackles, and other noises. Despite its name, the Forum Boarium sold very few cattle except those intended for sacrifice. There was plenty of other animal life, though, from asses to sacrificial doves. You could buy them alive or a piece at a time, already butchered.
    Besides the butchers, farmers, and livestock vendors, there were many other sorts of vendors’ stalls. But I was not looking for something to buy. In the Forum, I had noticed that the fortune-tellers’ stalls were gone, undoubtedly driven out by the censors or the aediles. This happened every few years, but they always drifted back. They had to be set up someplace and the cattle market was a good place to look, but I saw none.
    Then I saw a man haranguing a goat vendor. The speaker wore a senator’s tunic like mine, but his toga was plain. Heheld out his hand and the vendor sullenly handed over a number of coins. Collecting fines in the market meant this must be one of the plebeian aediles. The curule aediles wore a toga with a purple stripe.
    “Pardon me, Aedile,” I said, walking up behind him.
    He turned, his eyes automatically going to the purple stripe on my tunic. “Yes, Senator? How may I …” Then, at the same instant, we recognized one another. “Decius Caecilius! When did you get back?” He stuck out his hand and I took it, managing not to grit my teeth. It was Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, a man I detested.
    “Just yesterday. Your rank suits you, Lucius. You’ve lost weight.”
    He made a face. “Wretched office. I never have time to eat, and I spend my days crawling all over buildings looking for violations of the construction codes. It keeps me in shape. Ruinously expensive, too, since the sums contributed by the state were laid down about three hundred years ago and prices have gone up since. We have to make up the difference out of our own purses. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the year’s almost over.” Then he laughed jovially. He really did not