John Roberts - Temple Of Muses

"We don't really rule the world, Highness, just a very great part of it. As for our arrogance, we prize the qualities of dignitas and gravitas highly. We of the governing class are taught them from earliest youth. We don't tolerate foolishness in public men."

"That is good. Most people tolerate any sort of behavior in one whose birth is high enough. I heard that you knocked Memnon down yesterday with a single blow."

"Word does get around. Actually, it took two to put him down."

"I am glad. I don't like him."

"Oh," I said.

"Yes. He and Achillas are too presumptuous for their station. They treat my family with disrespect."

This was something to ponder. At that moment some of the guests stormed the stage and began ripping the costumes from the dancers amid excited laughter and shouted encouragement.

"Princess, despite your sister's advice, I think you should retire. You are far too young to be here alone, and some of these people have taken leave of whatever senses they had."

"But I am not alone," she said, nodding slightly to the shadowed gallery behind her. Suddenly I was aware that someone stood there, still as a statue.

"Who are you?" I asked. A youth of about sixteen stepped forward, his arms folded.

"I am Apollodorus, Senator."

He was a fine-looking boy, with curly black hair and handsome features that bore the unmistakable stamp of Sicily. He wore a brief chiton belted with a short sword and had leather bands at his wrist and ankles. He had that relaxed, almost limp bearing that you only see in the most highly trained athletes, but this was no mere palaestra-trained pretty boy. He had the mark of the ludus all over him, although I had never seen them in one so young.

"What school?" I asked.

"The ludus of Ampliatus in Capua," he said. That made sense.

"A good choice. They teach boxing and wrestling there as well as swordsmanship. If I wanted a bodyguard for my daughter, that's where I would send him."

The boy nodded. "I was sent there when I was ten. The king had me brought back five months ago, when he decided that the princess was to move to Alexandria." He turned to Cleopatra. "The Senator is right, Highness. You had better go inside now." His tone was easy, but I could hear adoration in every inflection.

"Very well," she said. "I really can't understand why people act in such a fashion anyway." Just wait, I thought.

I bade her good evening and made my way down to the party once more. In later years Marcus Antonius was reviled for being so besotted with Cleopatra, forgetting Rome and everything else to serve her. They thought him weak and unmanly. But I knew Cleopatra when she was ten, and poor Antonius never had a chance.

I was beginning to feel the need of something to go with the wine. On a broad marble table was coiled a gigantic sausage, made from the intestines of an elephant stuffed with the sweet flesh of waterfowl. It smelled delicious, but the appearance was horrifying. A slave offered me a skewer strung with the bloated bodies of huge locusts. These are a great delicacy in the desert, but scarcely to Roman taste. Luckily, I encountered a tray of pork ribs simmered in garum before starvation set in, I feasted on these and other agreeable items and felt ready to face the balance of the evening.

The sound of clashing weapons drew me to a lawn where athletes were putting on an exhibition of swordsmanship. These were not true gladiators, for there were none in Egypt in those days. They were skillful and pleasant to watch, but none of them would have lasted a minute in an Italian amphitheater. I saw Fausta and Berenice watching them. To my relief, the cheetahs were gone.

"This is a most extraordinary event, Highness," I said to Berenice.

"We do our best. Fausta was just telling me about the gladiator fights she and her brother put on at her father's funeral games. Our priests and philosophers and such would never allow death-fights here, I'm afraid They sound thrilling."

"The munera are an integral part of our religion," I told her. "Other people sometimes find the fights a bit strong for their tastes."

"We showed a thousand pairs fighting over a period of twenty days," Fausta said, "not to mention hundreds of lions and tigers and rhinoceroses, along with the more common bears and bulls. The Senate protested the extravagance, but who cares about them?" Spoken like a true daughter of Sulla. "Of course, women are supposed to be forbidden to attend the munera, but we do anyway, I find them far more enjoyable than the chariot races."

"Each has its advantages," I said. "You can bet openly on the races, for instance, while it's frowned on at the fights. Speaking of religious matters," I said cleverly, "I would be most interested in hearing the princess tell how she found the holy man Ataxas and his god, Baal-Ahriman." Fausta looked at me quizzically. This was the last subject she would have expected me to bring up.

"Ah, it was so marvelous! I was in my garden in my

Alexandrian palace just before the last floods, when the image of Horus spoke to me."

"Spoke to you?" I said, with a conscious effort to keep my eyebrows level.

"Yes, very clearly. He said, 'Daughter, I proclaim the advent of a new god to rule over the Red Land and the Black. His prophet will appear in your court before the floods. Receive him as befits one sent by the immortal gods of Egypt.'"

"And that was all?" I asked. In most accounts, the gods are wordier.

"It was enough," she said.

"And did the god's mouth, or rather his beak, move as he spoke?" Perhaps I should explain that Horus is one of the less repellent of the Egyptian gods, having the noble head of a falcon.

"I did not notice. I prostrated myself at his feet the moment he began to speak. Even a princess must abase herself before a god."

"Quite understandable," I assured her.

"You can imagine my transports of joy when the Holy Ataxas arrived to proclaim the truth of Baal-Ahriman. He was quite modest and unassuming, you know. He was astonished when I told him that Horus had already announced his coming."

"Indeed, indeed. And has he manifested greater than normal powers since his arrival?"

"Of course. He has healed many believers of afflictions such as deafness and palsy. He has bidden other statues to speak, and they have, foretelling a brilliant future for Egypt. But he claims no special powers for himself. He says that he is the mere conduit for the glorious might of Baal-Ahriman." When she spoke of Ataxas, her eyes seemed to disengage from each other, as if seeing something infinitely far away, or else seeing nothing at all.

"You say a 'brilliant future.' Is there any indication of the nature of this brilliance?"

"No, but I believe that is to be the matter of the divine words we shall soon hear from Baal-Ahriman himself."

I had more questions, but at that moment the major-domo arrived, gasping for breath. Another eunuch.

"Princess, a hippo has left the pond and is attacking the Cretan dancers!"

"They probably think it's Zeus in disguise again," I said, "looking for another mortal woman to ravish. If he gets any volunteers, this might be worth seeing."

"Oh, I suppose I must attend to it," Berenice said, "Seti, summon the guards. Tell them to bring long spears. They can probably poke the beast back into the pond. It is not to be harmed. It is sacred to Taveret."

"There goes the reason why the gods frown upon incest," I said when she was gone.

"Rome is full of eccentrics, too," Fausta said. "It just seems sillier in foreign royalty."

"I suppose so. But if Horus wanted to proclaim the coming of a new god, why not to Ptolemy? Why choose his deranged daughter?"

"I take it you find her story difficult to accept?"

"Decidedly. Divine visitations are common enough in legend, but they always sound more plausible in the age of heroes. Mind you, my own grandfather was visited by the Dioscuri, but that was in a dream and I think he'd been drinking."