It was, in short, the perfect Epicurean life he had always imagined as a boy, filled with friends, food, freedom and sex. Lots of sex.
Those were the good days.
On his bad days, he slept until noon, hung over from a late party or a nightmare induced by his creativity-enhancing leaves. Having missed his peak writing time, and not feeling up to laps at the Circus Maximus, he’d still have lunch with friends, go to the baths, enjoy a massage and a nap, albeit alone because the ever-practical Helena would be upset with him for his lethargy. All the same, they’d go out to dinner and perhaps see one of his own productions, just so he could validate that he existed. Then on to the can’t-miss parties where the wine would loosen his lips and he’d talk about his writing and productions and delight the great of Rome with his humor and wit, praying to the Muses that he’d remember what he had said the next morning so he could write it down. He rarely did, of course, and too often the first time it all came back was while attending a rival’s production when he heard the actors utter his stolen lines.
This was one of the bad days. He could feel it.
It was noon already, after all.
Helena was in the courtyard, where she emerged dripping from a bathing pool. Behind her was a gigantic, half-finished sculpture of herself in the guise of the goddess of love. The sculptor Colonius had been taking his sweet time with the hammer and chisel, Athanasius thought, and was months behind. He could hardly blame him.
Helena caught sight of him and wrapped a clingy gown around her supple, golden body. Then she turned to face him with her two round breasts and a smile.
“The toast of Rome has awakened!” she announced.
A true Amazon in height, she stood almost a head taller than him in her bare feet, and he was by no means average. She was a sight to behold with her hair of gold, flawless features and eyes of sapphire blue that betrayed an intelligence her beauty often masked to mad distraction. He had fallen for her instantly. The miracle was that of all the senators, noblemen and charioteers to choose from, Helena, the glory of Rome herself, had chosen him.
“My Aphrodite,” he said.
“This year’s model.” She kissed him on the lips. “But I’ll always be your Helena.”
“You let me sleep in. Half the day is gone.”
“And half your delirium. You know how you get before an opening. I spared us both.”
She was right about that. Tonight was the premiere of Opus Gloria, his greatest and most controversial work yet, and he was a wreck. He needed it to be well-received, to secure his marriage to Helena. Her well-connected Roman family was quite wealthy at one time but had lost much of their fortune. If not for the modeling that her beauty brought her, and she had earned quite a bit from it, she would have been penniless by now, or married to a man she did not love. All the money in the world would never quench her fear of poverty, Athanasius knew, but they had agreed that the success of Opus Gloria would go a long way and be enough for them to marry. Next month would mark a full year living together, when Roman law regarded them as married. But she had planned a huge, multi-day wedding celebration, and he had planned to take her to Greece afterward to meet his mother and cousins, where there would be another wedding party.
So in truth the affections of Helena could not be bought, but they still had to be paid for. Thus the significance of Opus Gloria and his success in this Roman world, which would mean little to him without Helena by his side.
“I suppose you are right,” he told her and kissed her back.
She smiled. “Repeat that line over and over in your head tonight, and all will be well.”
He laughed. If only his father were still alive to meet Helena and see his success as a playwright. His father always told him to take pride in his heritage and “show the Romans what the Greeks are still made of.” His memory made Athanasius suddenly reconsider the staging of tonight’s performance.
Helena saw it in an instant. “Now what?”
“I still don’t know why we should have to go to the Palace of the Flavians tonight to see my own play,” he said. “Caesar and the rest should be coming to the Pompey to see it. That’s the proper venue. The stage has already lost its place to the Games of the Flavian Amphitheater. Soon it will drop behind the races of the Circus Maximus when its latest incarnation is completed. If it falls another notch, I might fall off with it.”
“Oh, Athanasius. Only you would find a way to diminish your achievement. You are bigger than the stage. What playwright wouldn’t give his right hand to enjoy a venue at the palace? Besides, you heard what Maximus said about the Pompey. It has too many sinister associations for Domitian. Why would he want to celebrate your opus at the very place where Julius Caesar was assassinated backstage? It might give people ideas.”
“Yes, well, we can’t have any of those running around on the loose.”
He thought of his father again, and then of dear old Senator Maximus, who had become something of a surrogate father to him. The senator was a Hellenophile and early fan of his plays, navigating them through the government censors and political traps of Roman high society. Even so, the roar of the mob in the wind was a grim reminder to Athanasius that the fading art of his scripted comedies was no match for the so-called “reality” of the Games. They were as bad as religion. Indeed, they were the new religion of Rome. But he dare not speak it aloud, for who knew who was listening? But he thought it. And Rome had not invented a way to read minds yet. There was still free thought, if not expression.
“You hear that?” he asked Helena, lifting a finger to the breeze as another cheer rang out in the distance. “You know what that is?”
She shrugged. “The last of Flavius Clemens, I suppose.”
“That’s right,” he lectured her. “First it was the Jews. Now it’s the Christians. Who’s next?”
Helena smiled brightly. “You?”
“Laugh all you want, Helena. You haven’t heard Juvenal’s jokes about Greeks in Rome.”
“He flatters you by imitation, Athanasius, and everybody knows he is not half the wit you are.” Helena ran her soft finger down his cheek and gazed at him lovingly.
“There is no pleasing you when you are in a mood, Athanasius, is there?”
“No.”
“Then relax yourself before tonight. Join your friends at Homer’s for lunch. Go to your favorite bath. Take a massage. Then enjoy the premiere of your greatest play ever.”
“And then?”
“Let your work do its work. Let your rival Ludlumus burn in jealousy at what you can do with words that he cannot do with a thousand Bengal tigers. Let Latinus and the rest of your actors take the credit. Let the world and even Caesar himself forget September 18th and the sword of Damocles that hangs over Rome. This is your night to be worshipped, to join the pantheon of the gods of art.”
“And then?”
“And then you get to go to bed tonight with the goddess of love and wake up tomorrow on top of the world.”
She was heaven for him, it was true. “Well, you do have that effect on a man.”
“A performance not to be missed,” she told him, and kissed him on the lips again, warm and wet, full of promise.
Helena looked on with great affection as Athanasius walked away, but she felt a dark cloud of fear forming over her head and frowned. This bothered her even more because she knew frowning was not good for her. She may be the face of Aphrodite, but she didn’t wake up that way. It took eight girls — now waiting for her in the bathhouse — to fix her hair, paint her lips and buff her nails for her to reach perfection for this evening. And this wasn’t ancient Greece. It was modern Rome. Sculptors like Colonius were no idealists. The first tiny crease around her eyes would become a giant crack in marble and spell the end of her reign and the start of another’s.