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first and raced across the lawns to greet them, followed more sedately by their mother, Julia, a pleasant looking, dark skinned and rather plump woman. Antonius himself came out of the house a moment later, followed by three other men. He was punctilious in matters of behavior for himself as well as others, and he greeted his niece and his nephew and their friend with grave courtesy—and then formally introduced his guests. Two of them were well known to Caius, Lentelus Gracchus, a shrewd, successful city politician, and Licinius Crassus, the general who had made such a name for himself in the Servile War and who was the talk of the city and had been for a year. The third man in the party was a stranger to Caius; he was younger than the others, not much older than Caius himself, diffident with the subtle diffidence of one who was not patrician born, arrogant with the less subtle arrogance of the intellectual Roman, calculating in his estimation of the newcomers, and moderately good looking. His name was Marcus Tullius Cicero, and he acknowledged his introduction to Caius and the two pretty young women with modest self-effacement. Yet he could not efface his restless curiosity, and even Caius, who was not the most perceptive of persons, realized that Cicero was examining them, assessing them, trying to compute their background, aggregate family wealth, and influence as well.

    Claudia, meanwhile, had fixed upon Antonius Caius as the most desirable male element, the master of the imposing house and the endless acres. Having only a nominal sense of politics and a rather vague notion of war, she was not particularly impressed by either Gracchus or Crassus, and Cicero was not only unknown—which meant of no consequence to Claudia—but obviously one of the money-grubbing race of knights whom she had been taught to despise. Julia already was pressing up to Caius, a favorite of hers, purring against him like a large, ungainly kitten, and Claudia made a shrewder estimate of Antonius than Caius ever had. She saw the big, hook-nosed, powerfully muscled land-owner as a mass of repressions and unsatisfied hungers. She sensed the sensual lining to his patently assumed puritanism, and Claudia preferred men who were powerful yet powerless. Antonius Caius would never be indiscreet or annoying. All this, she let him know with her apparently listless smile.

    The whole party had come to the house now. Caius had dismounted before, and now an Egyptian house-slave led away his horse. The litter-bearers, weary from all the miles they had come, sweating, crouched beside their burdens and shivered in the evening coolness. Now their lean bodies were animal-like in weariness, and their muscles quivered with the pain of exhaustion, even as an animal’s does. No one looked at them, no one noticed them, no one attended them. The five men, the three women and the two children went into the house, and still the litter-bearers crouched by the litters, waiting. Now one of them, a lad of no more then twenty, began to sob, more and more uncontrollably; but the others paid no attention to him. They remained there at least twenty minutes before a slave came to them and led them off to the barracks where they would have food and shelter for the night.
     

VIII
     
    Caius shared his bath with Licinius Crassus, and he was relieved to find that the great man was not of the school which took him, Caius, personally to task for all the effete qualities of well born youth today. He found Crassus pleasant and affable, and he had that winning manner which seeks for the opinions of others, even when others are persons of no particular importance. They lolled in the bath, treading water lazily, floating back and forth, luxuriating in the warm, scented water, so heavily impregnated with fragrant salts. Crassus’ body was well kept, not the paunchy affair of middle age, but hard and flat, and he was youthful and alert. He asked Caius whether they had come down the road