Wonders along the way, and your exploits in Alexandria. How dull my own life seemed by comparison. How old you made me feel, as if life had passed me by! While my colleagues and I lounged under parasols, debating good and evil, you were out in the streets, encountering good and evil in the flesh, taking part in the whirling drama of life and death. Who was I to speak of discerning truth from falsehood, when sitting beside me on the steps of the library was the young Roman who had solved the riddle of the cat murdered in the Rhakotis district, which caused half the populace of the city to riot?"
"You remember that story?" I said, amazed.
"I have never forgotten it! Even now I can close my eyes and hear you telling the tale while philosophers and shopkeepers gathered around to listen in awe."
"The killing of a mere cat caused the city to riot?" Trygonion turned a heavy-lidded, dubious gaze at each of us in turn.
"You obviously have never been to Alexandria, where cats are gods," said Dio curtly. "Only a few years ago a similar incident occurred. The culprit was a Roman, or so they said. But given the political climate in Alexandria these days, any pretext will do to stir up the mob to chase a Roman through the streets, cat killer or not." He stopped his pacing and took a halting breath, then another. "Do you think we could retire to another room? The brazier is too hot. The air grows stuffy."
"I could call Belbo to unshutter another window," I suggested.
"No, no, perhaps we could step outside for a moment?"
"As you like."
I led them into the garden. Trygonion made a show of shivering and hugging himself, flapping the folds of his toga in an undignified, decidedly un-Roman fashion. Dio studied the fishpond with an abstracted air, then gazed up at the darkening sky, took several deep breaths and resumed his pacing, which brought him to a startled halt before the statue of Minerva. The virgin goddess held an upright spear in one hand and clutched a shield in the other. An owl perched on her shoulder and a snake coiled at her feet. The whole statue was painted in such lifelike color that the goddess seemed to breathe and gaze down on us from beneath the visor of her crested helmet.
"Magnificent," he whispered. Trygonion, loyal to the Great Mother, gave the goddess of wisdom only a cursory glance.
I stepped alongside Dio and gazed up at the statue's familiar face. "The only female in the place who never talks back to me. But then, she never seems to listen to me, either."
"She must have cost a small fortune."
"Probably, though I can't tell you the cost. I gained her by inheritance, more or less, like the rest of this house. The tale of how that came to pass would fill a book."*
Dio surveyed the portico that surrounded the garden, clearly impressed. "Those multicolored tiles above the doorways-"
"Fired by artisans in Arretium. So my late benefactor Lucius Claudius once told me, when I was merely a visitor here."
"And all these finely carved columns-"
"Salvaged and brought up with great difficulty, so I was told, from an old villa at Baiae, as was the statue of Minerva. All are of Greek design and workmanship. Lucius Claudius had impeccable taste and con-siderable resources."
"And now all this is yours? You've done well for yourself, Gordianus. Very well, indeed. When they said that you lived in a fine house here on the Palatine, I wondered if it could be the same man who'd led a wanderer's life in Alexandria, living from hand to mouth."
I shrugged. "I may have been a wanderer, but I always had the humble house of my father to come back to here in Rome on the EsquilineHill."
"But surely that couldn't be as fine as this. You have prospered remarkably. You see, I judged you rightly when I met you long ago in Alexandria. I have known many wise men, philosophers who crave knowledge as other men crave fine wines or sumptuous clothing or a beautiful slave-as a glittering possession that will bring them comfort and earn other men's esteem. But you sought after truth as if you wished to marry her. You yearned for truth, Gordianus, as if you could not live without breathing her perfume every morning and night. You loved all her mysteries in equal measure-the great mysteries of philosophy as well as the practical mystery of discovering the killer of an Alexandrian cat. To search for truth is virtue. For your virtue the gods have rewarded you."
I could think of no response but a shrug. In the thirty years since I had last seen Dio I easily could have died a hundred times, for my labors had often brought me into danger, or I could have fallen into ruin like so many other men. Instead I owned a fine house on the Palatine and counted senators and wealthy merchants among my neighbors. Dio's explanation of my good luck was as reasonable as any other, though it seems to me that even philosophers cannot say what causes Fortune to smile on one man and show spite to another. Watching him resume his fitful pacing, I couldn't help thinking that Dio, for all his years of devotion to finding the truth, had the haggard look of a man whom Fortune had abandoned.
*'Catilina's Riddle (St. Martin's Press, 1993).
It had been some time since I had conversed at length with a philosopher. I had forgotten how much they loved to talk, even more than politicians, and not always to the point. We had rambled far from the purpose of Dio's visit. It was beginning to grow chilly in the garden.
"Come, let's go back into the house. If the brazier is too hot, I'll have the serving girl bring you some cool wine."
"Heated wine for me," Trygonion said, shivering.
"Yes, more of your very fine wine," Dio murmured. "I'm quite thirsty."
"Hungry, as well?" I said. My own stomach rumbled. "No!" he insisted. But as he stepped through the doorway he tripped and stumbled, and when I reached out to steady him I felt him trembling. "When did you last eat?" He shook his head. "I'm not sure." "You can't remember?"
"Yesterday I dared to take a walk outside, disguised as you see me now, and bought some bread in the market." He shook his head. "I should have bought more to eat this morning-but of course someone could have poisoned it while I slept… "
"Then you've eaten nothing at all today?"
"The slaves tried to poison me at the last place I stayed! Even at the house of Titus Coponius I can't feel safe. If one man's slaves can be bribed to kill a houseguest then so can another's. I eat nothing unless I see it prepared with my own eyes, or unless I buy it myself in the markets where it could not possibly have been tampered with."
"Some men have slaves to taste their food for them," I said, knowing the practice was especially common in Dio's Alexandria, where the inbred, rival monarchs and their agents were forever attempting secretly to do away with one another.
"Of course I had a taster!" said Dio. "How do you think I escaped the attempt to poison me? But the problem with tasters is that they must be replaced, and my stay in Rome has exhausted my resources. I don't even have money to make my way back to Alexandria once the weather warms and the sailing season begins." He stumbled again and almost fell against the brazier.
"But you're faint with hunger!" I protested, gripping his arm and steering him toward a chair. "I insist that you eat. The food in my house is perfectly safe, and my wife-" I was about to add some extravagant estimation of Bethesda's culinary skills, but having just been praised as a seeker of truth I said instead, "My wife is not at all a bad cook, especially when she prepares dishes in the Alexandrian style."
"Your wife cooks?" said Trygonion. "In such a grand house as this?"
"The property's more impressive than my purse. Besides, she likes to cook, and she has a slave to help her. Here she is now," I added, for in the doorway stood Bethesda.
I was about to say more by way of introduction, but the look on her face stopped me. She looked from Dio to Trygonion, then back at Dio, who in his faint seemed hardly to notice her, then at me, all with a scowl that after thirty years of living with her I could not account for. What had I done now?