“This, of course, is the public courtyard,” said Licinia. “You know it from the functions you have attended here.”

“At none of which I’ve ever had the leisure or the isolation to see it properly,” said Caesar. “When something belongs to you, you regard it through different eyes.”

Nowhere was the height of the Domus Publica more apparent than from the middle of this main peristyle; it was walled up on all four sides to the apex of the roofs. A covered colonnade of deep-red Doric pillars surrounded it, with the arched and shuttered windows of the top floor rearing above its beautifully painted back walls, done in the red style and displaying against that rich background some of the famous Vestals and their deeds, the faces faithfully reproduced because Chief Vestals were quite entitled to own imagines, wax masks tinted to lifelike truth surmounted by wigs accurate in color and style.

“The marble statues are all by Leucippus, and the bronzes by Strongylion,” said Licinia. “They were the gift of one of my own ancestors, Crassus Pontifex Maximus.”

“And the pool? It’s lovely.”

“Donated by Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, domine.”

Obviously someone gardened, but Caesar knew who was going to be the new guiding light: Gaius Matius. At which moment he turned to observe the back wall, and saw what seemed like hundreds of windows peering down from the Via Nova, most of them filled with faces; everyone knew that today the new Pontifex Maximus underwent inauguration, and was bound to call in to see his residence and his charges, the Vestals.

“You have absolutely no privacy,” he said, pointing.

“None, domine, from the main peristyle. Our own peristyle was added by Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, and he built its walls so high we are invisible.” She sighed. “Alas, we get no sun.”

They moved then into the only public room, the cella between the building’s two sides that constituted the temple. Though it contained no statues, it too was frescoed and lavishly gilded; the light unfortunately was too dim to appreciate the quality of the work the way it demanded. Down either side, each on a precious stand, marched a row of miniature temples, the cabinets in which lived the imagines of the Chief Vestals since the order had been started in the misty days of the earliest kings of Rome. No use opening one to peer in at the color of Claudia’s skin or the way she had worn her hair; the light was too poor.

“We will have to see what we can do about that,” said Caesar, proceeding back to the vestibule, the first room he had entered.

Here, he realized now, the antiquity of the place showed best, for it was so old Licinia could not tell him exactly why it was the way that it was, or what the purpose of its features might have been. The floor rose ten feet from the outer doors to the temple doors in three separate ramps tiled with a truly fabulous mosaic of what he guessed might be glass or faience in convoluted but abstract patterns. Dividing the ramps from each other and giving them their curving outline were two amygdalae, almond-shaped wells paved with time-blackened blocks of tufa, each one containing at its ritual middle a pedestal of polished black stone upon which stood the halves of a hollow spherical rock lined with garnet-colored crystals glittering like beads of blood. On either side of the outer doors lay another tufa-paved well, inner edge curved. The walls and ceiling were much newer, a complex riot of plaster flowers and lattices, painted in shades of green and picked out with gilt.

“The sacred car upon which we move our dead passes easily down either side ramp—Vestals use one, the Pontifex Maximus the other—but we do not know who used the central ramp, or what for. Perhaps the death car of the King, but I do not know. It is a mystery,” said Licinia.

“There must be answers somewhere,” said Caesar, fascinated. He gazed at the Chief Vestal with brows raised. “Where now?”

“Whichever side you prefer to see first, domine.”

“Then let it be your side.”

The half of the Domus Publica which accommodated the Vestals also housed an industry, plain to see when Licinia ushered Caesar into an L-shaped room fifty feet long. What would have been the atrium or reception room of an ordinary domus was here the workplace of the Vestals, who were the formal custodians of Roman wills. It had been most intelligently converted to serve its purpose, with box shelves to the lofty ceiling for book buckets or unprotected scrolls, desks and chairs, ladders and stools, and a number of stands from which hung big sheets of Pergamum parchment made up of smaller rectangles carefully and minutely sewn together.

“We accept custody of the will through there,” said the Chief Vestal, pointing toward the area closest to the outside doors through which entered those who wished to lodge their wills within the Atrium Vestae. “As you can see, it is walled off from the main part of the room. Would you like to look, domine?”

“Thank you, I know the spot well,” said Caesar, executor of many wills.

“Today, of course, being feriae, the doors are closed and no one is on duty. Tomorrow we’ll be busy.”

“And this part of the room contains the wills.”

“Oh, no!” gasped Licinia, horrified. “This is just our record room, domine.”

“Record room?”

“Yes. We keep a record of every will lodged with us as well as the testament itself—name, tribe, address, age when lodged, and so forth. When the will is executed it leaves us. But the records never do. Nor do we ever discard them.”

“So all these book buckets and pigeonholes are stuffed with records, nothing but records?”

“Yes.”

“And these?’’ he asked, walking across to one of the stands to count the number of parchment sheets suspended from it.

“Those are our master plans, an instruction manual for finding everything from which names belong to which tribes, to lists of municipia, towns all over the world, maps of our storage system. Some of them contain the full roll of Roman citizens.”

The stand held six parchment sheets two feet wide and five feet long, each of them written upon both sides, the script clear and fine and darkly delineated, quite the equal of any trained Greek scribe’s writing that Caesar had ever known. His eyes roamed the room and counted thirty stands in all. “They list more than you’ve told me.”

“Yes, domine. We archive everything we can, it interests us to do so. The first Aemilia who was ever a Vestal was wise enough to know that the everyday tasks, tending the sacred fire and carrying all of our water from the well—it was the Fountain of Egeria in those days, admittedly a lot farther away than Juturna—were not enough to keep our minds busy and our intentions and our vows pure. We had been custodians of wills when all the Vestals were daughters of the King, but under Aemilia we expanded the work we did, and commenced to archive.”

“So here I see a veritable treasure-house of information.”

“Yes, domine.”

“How many wills do you have in your care?”

“About a million.”

“All listed here,” he said, hand sweeping around the high, crammed walls.

“Yes and no. The current wills are confined to pigeonholes; we find it easier to consult a naked scroll than to struggle in and out of book buckets all the time. We keep things well dusted. The buckets contain the records of wills departed from our custody.”

“How far do your records go back, Licinia?”

“To the two youngest daughters of King Ancus Marcius, though not in the detail Aemilia instituted.”

“I begin to understand why that unorthodox fellow Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus installed your plumbing and reduced the taking of water from the Well of Juturna to a ritual daily pitcherful. You have more important work to do, though at the time Ahenobarbus did it, he created a furor.”

“We will never cease to be grateful to Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus,” said Licinia, leading the way to a flight of stairs. “He added the second storey not only to make our lives healthier and more comfortable, but also to give us room to store the wills themselves. They used to be in the basement, we had nowhere else. Even so, storage is once again a problem. In earlier times wills were confined to Roman citizens, and mostly citizens who lived within Rome herself at that. These days we accept almost as many wills from citizens and non-citizens who live all over the world.” She coughed and sniffled as she reached the top of the stairs and opened the door into a vast cavern lit from windows on one side only, that looking at the House of Vesta.

Caesar understood her sudden attack of respiratory distress; the place exuded a miasma of paper particles and bone-dry dust.

“Here we store the wills of Roman citizens, perhaps three quarters of a million,” said Licinia. “Rome, there. Italia, here. The various provinces of Rome, there and there and there. Other countries, over here. And a new . section for Italian Gaul, here. It became necessary after the Italian War, when all the communities south of the Padus River were enfranchised. We had to expand our section for Italia too.”

They were pigeonholed in rank after rank of wooden box shelves, each one tagged and labeled, perhaps fifty to one single box; he withdrew a specimen from Italian Gaul, then another and another. All different in size and thickness and the sort of paper, all sealed with wax and someone’s insignia. This one hefty—a lot of property! That one slender and humble—perhaps a tiny cottage and a pig to bequeath.

“And where are the wills of non-citizens stored?” he asked as Licinia descended the stairs ahead of him.

“In the basement, domine, together with the records of all army wills and deaths on military service. We do not, of course, ever have custody of soldiers’ wills themselves—they remain in the care of the legion clerks, and when a man finishes his time, they destroy his will. He then makes a new one and lodges it with us.” She sighed mournfully. “There is still space down there, but I fear it won’t be long before we have to shift some of the provincial citizen wills to the basement, which also has to house quite a lot of sacred equipment we and you need for ceremonies. So where,” she enquired plaintively, “will we go when the whole of the basement is as full as it was for Ahenobarbus?”

“Luckily, Licinia, it won’t be your worry,” said Caesar, “though it will undoubtedly be mine. How extraordinary to think that feminine Roman efficiency and attention to detail has bred a repository the like of which the world has never known before! Everyone wants his will kept safe from prying eyes and tampering pens. Where else is that possible except in the Atrium Vestae?”

The largeness of this observation escaped her, she was too busy shocking herself at discovery of an omission. “Domine, I forgot to show you the section for women’s wills!” she cried.

“Yes, women do make wills,” he said, preserving gravity. “It is a great comfort to realize that you segregate the sexes, even in death.” When this sailed somewhere miles above her head, he thought of something else. “It amazes me that so many people lodge their wills here in Rome, yet may dwell in places up to several months’ journey away. I would have thought all the movable property and coin would have vanished by the time the will itself could be executed.”

“I do not know, domine, because we never find out things like that. But if people do it, then surely they must feel secure in doing it. I imagine,” she concluded simply, “that everyone fears Rome and Roman retribution. Look at the will of King Ptolemy Alexander! The present King of Egypt is terrified of Rome because he knows Egypt really belongs to Rome from that will.”

“True,” said Caesar solemnly.

From the workplace (where, he noticed, even the two child Vestals were now busy at some task, feriae notwithstanding) he was conducted to the living quarters. These were, he decided, very adequate compensation for a conventual existence. However, the dining room was country style, chairs round a table.

“You don’t have men to dine?” he asked.

Licinia looked horrified. “Not in our own quarters, domine! You are the only man who will ever enter here.”

“What about doctors and carpenters?”

“There are good women doctors, also women craftsmen of all kinds. Rome bears no prejudices against women in trades.”

“So much I don’t know, despite the fact that I’ve been a pontifex for over ten years,” said Caesar, shaking his head.

“Well, you were not in Rome during our trials,” said Licinia, her voice trembling. “Our private entertaining and living habits were publicly aired then. But under normal circumstances only the Pontifex Maximus among the priests concerns himself with how we live. And our relatives and friends, naturally.”

“True. The last Julia in the College was Julia Strabo, and she died untimely. Do many of you die untimely, Licinia?”

“Very few these days, though I believe death here was common before we had water and plumbing laid on. Would you like to see the bathrooms and latrines? Ahenobarbus believed in hygiene for everyone, so he gave the servants baths and latrines too.”

“A remarkable man,” said Caesar. “How they reviled him for changing the law—and getting himself elected Pontifex Maximus at the same time! I remember Gaius Marius telling me there was an epidemic of marble-latrine-seat jokes after Ahenobarbus finished with the Domus Publica.”

Though Caesar was reluctant, Licinia insisted that he should see the Vestal sleeping arrangements.

“Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus thought of it after he came back from Spain. You see?” she asked, conducting him through a series of curtained archways leading off her own sleeping cubicle. “The only way out is through my room. We all used to have doors onto the passageway, but Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus bricked them up. He said we must be protected from all allegations.”

Lips tight, Caesar said nothing; they retraced their steps back to the Vestal workplace. There he returned to the subject of wills, which fascinated him.

“Your figures shocked me,” he said, “but I realize they ought not. All my life has passed in the Subura, and how many times I have seen it for myself, that Head Count man owning a single slave solemnly parading down to the Atrium Vestae to lodge his will. Nothing to leave but a brooch, some chairs and a table, a prized haybox oven, and his slave. Tricked out in his citizen’s toga and bearing his grain chit as proof of his Roman status, as proud as Tarquinius Superbus. He can’t vote in the Centuries and his urban tribe makes his comitial vote worthless, but he can serve in our legions and he can lodge his will.”

“You neglected to say, domine, how many times he arrives with you at his side as his patron,” said Licinia. “It does not escape us which patrons find the time to do this, and which just send one of their freedmen.”

“Who comes in person?” asked Caesar, curious.

“You and Marcus Crassus, always. Cato too, and the Domitii Ahenobarbi. Of the rest, hardly any.”

“No surprise in those names!”

Time to change the subject while a loud voice would enable all the toiling white-clad figures to hear him. “You work very hard,” he said. “I’ve lodged enough wills and demanded enough of them for probate, but it never occurred to me what an enormous task it is to care for Rome’s last testaments. You are to be commended.”

Thus it was a very pleased and happy Chief Vestal who let him into the vestibule again, and handed him the keys to his domain.

Wonderful!

The L-shaped reception room was a mirror-image twin of the Vestal workplace, fifty feet on its long side. No expense or luxury had been spared, from the glorious frescoes to the gilding to the furniture and art objects littered everywhere. Mosaic floor, fabulous ceiling of plaster roses and gold honeycomb, colored marble pilasters engaging the walls and colored marble sheaths on the sole freestanding column.

A study and sleeping cubicle for the Pontifex Maximus, and a smaller suite for his wife. A dining room which held a full six couches. A peristyle garden off to one side, adjacent to the Porticus Margaritaria and on full view to the windows of the Via Nova insulae. The kitchen could feed thirty diners; though it was within the main structure, most of the outside wall was missing, and the dangerous cooking fires were in the yard. As was a cistern large enough to wash the clothes and serve as a reservoir in case of fire.

“Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus tapped into the Cloaca Maxima, which made him very popular with the Via Nova too,” said Licinia, smiling because she was talking about her idol. “When he put the sewer down our back alley, it enabled the insulae to use it, and the Porticus Margaritaria as well.”

“And the water?’’ asked Caesar.

“The Forum Romanum on this side abounds with springs, domine. One feeds your cistern, another the cistern in our yard.”

There were servants’ quarters both upstairs and downstairs, including a suite which would house Burgundus, Cardixa and their unmarried sons. And how ecstatic Eutychus would be to have his own little nest!

However, it was the front section of the top storey which put the final touch on Caesar’s gratitude for being dowered with the Domus Publica. The front stairs ascended between the reception room and his study, and conveniently divided the area into two. He would give all the rooms anterior to the stairs to Pompeia, which meant they need never see her or hear her from one market day clear through to the next! Julia could have the spacious suite behind the front stairs for her use, as there were two guest suites reached by the back stairs.

So whom did Caesar plan to install in the wife’s suite downstairs? Why, his mother, naturally. Whom else?

*

“What do you think?” he asked his mother as they walked up the Clivus Orbius after their inspection on the following day.

“It is superb, Caesar.” She frowned. “Only one aspect does worry me—Pompeia. Too easy for people to creep upstairs! The place is vast, no one will see who comes and goes.”

“Oh, Mater, don’t sentence me to keeping her downstairs right next door to me!” he cried.

“No, my son, I won’t do that. However, we have to find a way to police Pompeia’s comings and goings. In the apartment it was so easy to make sure Polyxena attended her the moment she ventured out the door, but here? We’d never know. Nor can she smuggle men into the apartment, whereas here? We’d never know.”

“Well,” said Caesar with a sigh, “my new position carries a good number of public slaves with it. On the whole they’re lazy and irresponsible because they’re not supervised and no one thinks to praise them if they do good work. That will most definitely change. Eutychus is getting old, but he’s still a wonderful steward. Burgundus and Cardixa can come back from Bovillae with their four youngest. Their four oldest can caretake Bovillae. It will be your job to organize a new regimen and a better frame of mind among the servants, both those we bring with us and those already here. I won’t have the time, so it must devolve upon you.”

“I understand that,” she said, “but it doesn’t answer our problem with Pompeia.”

“What that amounts to, Mater, is adequate supervision. We both know you can’t put just one servant on door duty or any kind of watch. He goes to sleep, from boredom if not from weariness. Therefore we’ll put two on permanent duty at the bottom of the front stairs. Day and night. And we set them some sort of task—folding linens without a crease, polishing knives and spoons, washing dishes, mending clothes—you know the duties better than I do. A certain amount must be done on each shift. Luckily there is a good-sized alcove between the beginning of the stairs and the end wall. I’ll put a loudly creaking door on it to shut it from view of the reception room, and that means whoever uses the stairs has to open it first. If our sentries should doze off, that at least will alert them. When Pompeia appears at the bottom to go out, one of them will notify Polyxena immediately. As well for us that Pompeia hasn’t got the gumption to run off before Polyxena can be found! If her friend Clodia tries to put her up to that, it will only happen once, I can assure you. For I shall inform Pompeia conduct of that kind is a good way to be divorced. I shall also instruct Eutychus to put servants on sentry duty who won’t collude with each other to accept bribes.”

“Oh, Caesar, I hate it!” cried Aurelia, striking her hands together. “Are we legionaries guarding the camp from attack?”

“Yes, Mater, I rather think we are. Her own silly fault. She’s mixing in the wrong circles and refuses to abandon them.”

“As the result of which we are obliged to imprison her.”

“Not really. Be fair! I haven’t forbidden her access to her women friends, either here or elsewhere. She and they can come and go as they please, including beauties like Sempronia Tuditani and Palla. And the appalling Pompeius Rufus. But Pompeia is now the wife of Caesar Pontifex Maximus, a social elevation of no mean order. Even for Sulla’s granddaughter. I can’t trust her good sense, because she hasn’t any. We all know the story of Metella Dalmatica and how she managed despite Scaurus Princeps Senatus to make Sulla’s life a misery when he was trying to be elected to the praetorship. Sulla spurned her then—evidence of his instinct for self-preservation, if nothing else. But can you see Clodius or Decimus Brutus or young Poplicola behaving with Sulla’s circumspection? Hah! They’d whip Pompeia off in a trice.”

“Then,” said Aurelia with decision, “when you see Pompeia to inform her of the new rules, I suggest you have her mother there as well. Cornelia Sulla is a splendid person. And she knows what a fool Pompeia is. Reinforce your authority with the authority her mother wields. It is no use bringing me into it, Pompeia detests me for chaining her to Polyxena.”

No sooner decided upon than done. Though the move to the Domus Publica took place the next day, Pompeia had been fully acquainted with the new rules before she and her handful of personal servants set eyes upon her palatial suite upstairs. She had wept, of course, and protested the innocence of her intentions, but to no avail. Cornelia Sulla was sterner than Caesar, and adamant that in the event of a fall from grace, her daughter would not be welcome to return to Uncle Mamercus’s house divorced on grounds of adultery. Fortunately Pompeia was not the type to nurse grudges, so by the time the move occurred she was completely immersed in the transfer of her tasteless but expensive knickknacks, and planning shopping trips to overfill those areas she considered denuded.

Caesar had wondered how Aurelia would cope with the change from landlady of a thriving insula to doyenne of the closest thing Rome had to a palace. Would she insist upon continuing to keep her books? Would she break the ties of more than forty years in the Subura? But by the time the afternoon of his inaugural feast came round, he knew that he need not have worried about that truly remarkable lady. Though she would personally audit, she said, the insula’s accounts would now be done by a man whom Lucius Decumius had found and vouched for. And it turned out that most of the work she had done was not on behalf of her own property; to fill in her days she had acted as agent for more than a dozen other landlords. How horrified her husband would have been if he had known that! Caesar just chuckled.

In fact, he realized, his elevation to Pontifex Maximus had given Aurelia a new lease on life. She was absolutely everywhere on both sides of the building, had established ascendancy over Licinia effortlessly and painlessly, made herself liked by all six Vestals, and would soon be, her son thought with silent laughter, absorbed in improving the efficiency not only of the Domus Publica, but also of its testamentary industry.

“Caesar, we ought to be charging a fee for this service,” she said, looking determined. “So much work and effort! Rome’s purse should see a return.”

But that he refused to countenance. “I agree that a fee would increase the Treasury’s profits, Mater, but it would also deprive the lowly of one of their greatest pleasures. No. On the whole, Rome has no trouble with her proletarii. Keep their bellies full and the games coming, and they’re content. If we begin to charge them for the entitlements of their citizenship, we’ll turn the Head Count into a monster which would devour us.”

*

As Crassus had predicted, Caesar’s election as Pontifex Maximus quietened his creditors magically. The office besides gave him a considerable income from the State, as was also true of the three major flamines, Dialis, Martialis and Quirinalis. Their three State residences stood on the opposite side of the Sacra Via from the Domus Publica, though of course there was no flamen Dialis, had not been since Sulla had let Caesar take off the helmet and cape of Jupiter Optimus Maximus’s special priest; that had been the bargain, no new flamen Dialis until after Caesar’s death. No doubt his State house had been let go to rack and ruin since it had lost Merula as tenant twenty-five years ago. As it was in his province now, he would have to see it, decide what needed to be done, and allocate the funds for repairs from the unused salary Caesar would have collected had he lived in it and practised as flamen.

After that, he’d rent it for a fortune to some aspiring knight dying to have a Forum Romanum address. Rome would see a return.

But first he had to deal with the Regia and the offices of the Pontifex Maximus.

The Regia was the oldest building in the Forum, for it was said to have been the house of Numa Pompilius, second King of Rome. No priests save the Pontifex Maximus and the Rex Sacrorum were permitted to enter it, though the Vestals served as the attendants of the Pontifex Maximus when he offered to Ops, and when the Rex Sacrorum sacrificed his ram on the dies agonales he employed the usual priestlings to help him and clean up afterward.

Thus when Caesar entered it he did so with flesh crawling and hair on end, so awesome an experience was it. Earthquakes had necessitated its rebuilding on at least two occasions during the Republic, but always on the same foundations, and always in the same unadorned tufa blocks. No, thought Caesar, gazing around, the Regia had never been a house. It was too small and it had no windows. The shape, he decided, was probably deliberate, too strange to have been anything other than a part of some ritual mystery. It was a quadrilateral of the kind the Greeks termed a trapezium, having no side parallel to any other. What religious meaning had it held for those people who had lived so long ago? It didn’t even face in any particular direction, if to do so meant considering one of its four walls a front. And perhaps that was the reason. Face no compass point and offend no God. Yes, it had been a temple from its inception, he was sure. This was where King Numa Pompilius had celebrated the rites of infant Rome.

There was one shrine against the shortest wall; that of course was to Ops, a numen with no face and no substance and no sex (for convenience, Ops was spoken of as feminine) who directed the forces which kept Rome’s Treasury replete and her people full-bellied. The roof at the far end contained a hole below which in a minute courtyard there grew two laurel trees, very slender and branchless until they poked out of the hole to drink up a little sun. This court was not walled off to the ceiling, the builder having contented himself with a waist-high tufa surround. And between the surround and the end wall there lay stacked neatly in four rows the twenty-four Shields of Mars, with the twenty-four Spears of Mars racked in the Sacra Via corner.

How fitting that it should be Caesar finally to come here as the servant of this place! He, a Julian descended from Mars. With an invocation to the God of War he carefully peeled off the covers of soft hide that hid one row of shields, and gazed down on them with breath suspended in awe. Twenty-three of them were replicas; one was the actual shield which had fallen from the sky at the behest of Jupiter to protect King Numa Pompilius from his foes. But the replicas were of the same age, and no one except King Numa Pompilius would ever know which was the genuine shield. He had done that on purpose, so the legend went, to confuse potential thieves; for only the real shield had the real magic. The only others like them were in wall paintings in Crete and the Peloponnese of Greece; they were almost man-high and shaped like two teardrops joined to form a slender waist, made from beautifully turned frames of hardwood upon which were stretched the hides of black-and-white cattle. That they were still in reasonably good condition was probably only because they were taken out for an airing every March and every October, when the patrician priests called Salii did their war dance through the streets to mark the opening and closing of the old campaign season. And here they were, his shields. His spears. He had never seen them at close quarters before, because at the age when he might have come to belong to the Salii, he had been flamen Dialis instead. The place was dirty and dilapidated—he would have to speak to Lucius Claudius, the Rex Sacrorum, about smartening up his bevy of priestlings! A stench of old blood lay everywhere, despite the hole in the roof, and the floor was smothered in rat droppings. That the Sacred Shields had not suffered was truly a miracle. By rights the rats ought to have eaten every scrap of hide off them centuries ago. A haphazard collection of book buckets stacked against the longest wall had not been so lucky, but some dozen stone tablets ranged next to them would defeat the sharpest incisors. Well, no time like the present to start repairing the ravages of time and rodents!

“I suppose,” he said to Aurelia over dinner that afternoon, “that I can’t introduce a busy little dog or a couple of needy mother cats into the Regia, it might contravene our religious laws. So how can I get rid of the rats?”

“I would say their presence in the Regia contravened our religious laws quite as much as any dog or cat would,’’ said Aurelia. “However, I do see what you mean. It is not a great difficulty, Caesar. The two old women who take care of the public latrine across the road from us in the Subura Minor can tell me the name of the man who makes their rat traps. Very clever! A sort of longish small box with a door on one end. The door is poised on a balance, and the balance is connected to a string, and the string is connected to a piece of cheese impaled on a hooked spike at the back of the box. When the rat tries to remove the cheese, the door falls down. The trick is to make sure that the fellow you depute to take the rats out of the box and kill them isn’t afraid of them. If he is, they escape.”

“Mater, you know everything! May I leave the acquisition of a few rat traps to you?”

“Certainly, ‘* she said, pleased with herself.

“There were never any rats in your insula.”

“I should hope not! You know perfectly well that dear Lucius Decumius is never without a dog.”

“And every one of them named Fido.”

“And every one of them an excellent ratter.”

“I notice that our Vestals prefer to keep cats.”

“Very handy animals provided they are females.” She looked mischievous. “One can of course understand why they keep no males, but it is the female cats which hunt, you know. Unlike dogs in that respect. Their litters are a nuisance, so Licinia tells me, but she is very firm, even with the children when they plead. The kittens are drowned at birth.”

“And Junia and Quinctilia drown in tears.”

“We must all,” said Aurelia, “grow used to death. And to not getting the desire of our hearts.”

As this was inarguable, Caesar changed the subject. “I was able to rescue some twenty book buckets and their contents, a little mangled but reasonably intact. It would seem that my predecessors did think to put the contents into new buckets whenever the old ones started to disintegrate from the rats, but it would have been more sensible, surely, to have eliminated the rats. For the time being I’ll keep the documents here in my study—I want to read them and catalogue them.”

“Archives, Caesar?”

“Yes, but not of the Republic. They date back to some of the earliest kings.”

“Ah! I understand why they interest you so much. You’ve always had a passion for ancient laws and archives. But can you read them? Surely they’re indecipherable.”

“No, they’re in good sound Latin of the kind written about three hundred years ago, and they’re on Pergamum parchment. I imagine one of the Pontifices Maximi of that era deciphered the originals and made these copies.” He leaned back on his couch. “I also found stone tablets, inscribed in the same writing as that on the stele in the well of the Lapis Niger. So archaic one can hardly recognize the language as Latin. A precursor of it, I suppose, like the song of the Salii. But I shall decipher them, never fear!”

His mother gazed at him fondly enough, yet with a little sternness too. “I hope, Caesar, that in the midst of all this religious and historical exploration you find the time to remember that you are standing for election as praetor this year. You must pay proper attention to the duties of the Pontifex Maximus, but you cannot neglect your career in the Forum.”

*

He had not forgotten, nor did the vigor and pace of his election campaign suffer because the lamps in his study burned until very late each night while he worked his way through what he had decided to call the Commentaries of the Kings. And thank all the Gods for that unknown Pontifex Maximus who had deciphered and copied them onto Pergamum parchment! Just where or what the originals were, Caesar did not know. They were certainly not in the Regia, nor were they similar to the stone tablets he had found. Those, he decided from his preliminary work, were annalistic and dated from the earliest kings, perhaps even from Numa Pompilius. Or Romulus? What a thought! Chilling. Nothing on parchment or stone was a history of the times, however. Both related to laws, rules, religious rites, precepts, functions and functionaries. At some moment soon they would have to be published; all of Rome must know what lay in the Regia. Varro would be ecstatic, and Cicero fascinated. Caesar would plan a dinner party.

*

As if to cap what had been an extraordinary year of ups and downs for Caesar, when the curule elections were held early in Quinctilis, he came in at the top of the praetors’ poll. Not one Century failed to name him, which meant he was able to rest secure long before the last man returned was sure he had been elected. Philippus, his friend from Mitylene days, would be a colleague; so too would Cicero’s irascible younger brother, tiny Quintus Cicero. But, alas, Bibulus was a praetor too.

When the lots were cast to decide which man should have which job, Caesar’s victory was complete. His name was on the first ball out of the spout; he would be urban praetor, the most senior man among the eight. That meant Bibulus couldn’t annoy him (he had received the Violence Court)—but he could certainly annoy Bibulus!

Time to break Domitia’s heart by discarding her. She had turned out to be discreet, so as yet Bibulus had no idea. But he would the moment she started weeping and wailing. They all did. Except Servilia. Perhaps that was why she alone had lasted.