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redistribute the vast properties of the defeated Pompeians to the poor. Stirred up by one of Caesar's youngest officers, the radical firebrand Dolabella, a mob had gathered in the Forum to call for debt relief. Antony explained that he had no authority to grant their demands; they would have to wait for Caesar's return. The mob rioted. Antony, determined to keep order, dispatched soldiers to clear the Forum. By the end of the day, more than eight hundred citizens were dead. The city was calmer after that.
    When Caesar finally returned and learned of the massacre, one of his first actions was to publicly berate Antony for the heavy-handedness of his rule—and to heap praise on Dolabella, the instigator of the mob. Caesar's actions may have been purely pragmatic, a bid to regain the favor of the lower orders. Still, his rebuke of his longtime protégé must have stung. Shortly after Caesar's return, Antony vanished from the public arena.
    So much, from hearsay, I knew about the situation between Caesar and Antony. What else had Hieronymus discovered?
    I scanned the notes written in Hieronymus's elegant hand. He went back and forth between Latin and Greek. His Latin was a bit stiff, but his Greek was almost absurdly elevated, full of Homeric flourishes, recondite references, and complicated puns. All this made for slow and difficult reading; glancing at the massive volume of material, I groaned at the idea of trying to read it all. I was surprised that Calpurnia had tolerated such prose.
    Translating in my head, I tried to strip away Hieronymus's stylistic indulgences, looking simply for the facts.
Antony currently resides in Pompey's old house, called the House of the Beaks, in the Carinae district. . . .
    How could that be? I remembered the day, shortly after my return to Rome, when Caesar announced that Pompey's entire estate would be sold at public auction to benefit the Treasury. He had charged Antony with conducting the auction, a formidable task. Pompey's house was stuffed with so many precious items, looted from his many campaigns of conquest, that simply making an inventory would pose a logistical challenge. But so far as I knew, there had been no auction. Yet Antony himself was living in the house of Pompey, according to Hieronymus.
    Had Caesar given Antony the house outright, and with it Pompey's treasures? That seemed unlikely. Rewarding a favorite with so much plunder would be a slap at the mob, many of whom were in desperate straits and still ready to agitate for a radical redistribution of wealth. It would also smack of the arrogant favoritism that Sulla had practiced when he was dictator, and Caesar would never wish to be compared to Sulla.
    I read on.
Antony divorced his second wife (and first cousin), the lovely Antonia, some time ago. He is living, quite openly, with his lover, the even more beautiful Cytheris. There can be no question of marriage, of course. An aristocrat like Antony, no matter how dissolute, could never marry a mere actress, especially a foreigner from Alexandria. . . .
    News of Antony's divorce came as no surprise. I had met Antonia before I left for Egypt. She was a bitter woman. Her marriage had not been happy, thanks largely to Antony's open affair with Cytheris, whom I had met also. "Even more beautiful" than Antonia, Hieronymus had written, but when I tried to picture Cytheris, the impression in my mind was not so much of her face as of her sheer sexual allure—a tangled mass of auburn hair; flashing hazel eyes; a loose gown that could barely contain her voluptuous breasts; and, most especially, the way she had of moving, executing even the smallest gesture with a dancer's sinuous grace.
Everything that one hears about the parties Antony and Cytheris have been throwing in Pompey's house is true. These events are obscenely lavish. If there are food shortages in Rome, one would never guess from looking at Antony's table. Pompey's famous stock of expensive wines? Almost gone! Antony and