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of a much younger man, and something occurred to Zeno.
    "I notice that most Roman men walk in exactly the same way, with paces of the same length."
    "It's the legionary pace," Gabinius told him, "one thousand paces to the mile. It's drilled into us from boyhood. Short men have to hurry and tall men amble, but every man walks at the same pace." He turned up a yet narrower street. "So you are a historian. I take it that this entails much travel?"
    "I've traveled more widely than most," Zeno assured him. "And my new friend Izates is from Alexandria.
    "I take it that you both have visited the lands to the eastern end of the sea? Our knowledge of those parts is very out of date and wasn't vast when it was current. Perhaps you could tell me something about that part of the world?"
    "Gladly," Zeno said, sensing that this was why the Roman had accepted them so readily. He wanted to know about the East. Perhaps the whole Senate was eager to learn about those lands. It was hardly a matter for wonder. This hardheaded people would understand that knowledge was power, and if the Romans understood nothing else, they un derstood power.
    As they walked, ordinary people greeted Gabinius as a personal friend and he returned their greetings, pausing to exchange words with many of them. Common citizens, it seemed, had great respect for their rulers but held them in little awe. This Zeno approved. It reminded him of the Athenian democracy in the days of Pericles. He remarked upon this to Gabinius.
    "Oh, yes. The highest offices are open to all citizens save freedmen recently manumitted, and even they may hold the lower, municipal posts. Among my colleagues in the Senate are men whose ancestry stretches back to Romulus, and others whose grandfathers were barbarian warriors who fought us along the Rhine and the Danube two generations ago."
    "We lack your flexible concept of citizenship," Zeno said, "but something of the sort has happened with the spread of Greek civilization. My friend here," he nudged Izates with an elbow, "could be mistaken for a native Hellene, but he was born a Jew."
    Gabinius looked at Izates with new interest. "I've heard of your nation. Is it true that you have only one god? That seems unnatural."
    "It seems unnatural to everyone but us. But even Plato and other philosophers have speculated that there is only a single godhead, and that men have divided that deity into many aspects in order to explain the phenomena of nature and the universe: Zeus for thunder and lightning, Poseidon for the sea, Aphrodite for the attraction between men and women, Dionysus for the terrible forces of nature, Apollo for the enlightened thoughts of men and so forth."
    "This is fascinating. I can see we shall have many enthralling discussions. Tell me, do your people still have their own kingdom, between Egypt and Seleucid Syria?"
    The Romans are truly concerned about the power structure of the East, Zeno thought. Something must be happening there.
    "Yes, the Hasmonean family clings to the kingdom of Judea. Egypt cares nothing for that part of the world anymore, and the Seleucids are too hard-pressed by the Parthiaris to give them much trouble."
    "So your kingdom is strong and secure?"
    "No longer my kingdom or my people," Izates said. "I'm more of an Alexandrian Greek, as Zeno says. But a man can't separate himself from his ancestry. The kingdom is beset by civil war, but that's an old story. When we are not united against an outside enemy, we fall to fighting among ourselves."
    "Just like Greeks," Zeno said.
    "Here we are. This is my house, which you are to regard as your own."
    They stood before a blank wall that stretched in both directions for a considerable distance. They walked through the door into a spacious entrance hall dominated by a tall wooden chest. Before the chest was a bronze statue of a god, before which smoldered a small brazier. Gabinius took a pinch of incense from a box next to the brazier and dropped it onto the coals. His