Caesar's Women Read Online Free PDF

said, awed into worship.
    “I was just about to go,” Cato announced in a loud, harsh, unmusical voice.
    “A pity you hadn't,” said Servilia through her teeth (which she did not grind, though she wanted to).
    “Where's Marcus Junius? They said you took him with you.”
    “Brutus! Call him Brutus, like everyone else!”
    “I do not approve of the change this past decade has brought to our names,” he said, growing louder. “A man may have one or two or even three nicknames, but tradition demands that he be referred to by his first and family names alone, not by a nickname.”
    “Well, I for one am profoundly glad of the change, Cato! As for Brutus, he isn't available to you.”
    “You think I'll give up,” he went on, his tone now achieving its habitual hectoring mode, “but I never will, Servilia. While there is life in me, I'll never give up on anything. Your son is my blood nephew, and there is no man in his world. Whether you like it or not, I intend to fulfill my duty to him.”
    “His stepfather is the paterfamilias, not you.”
    Cato laughed, a shrill whinny. “Decimus Junius is a poor puking ninny, no more fit than a dying duck to have supervision of your boy!”
    Few chinks in his enormously thick hide though Cato had, Servilia knew where every one of them was. Aemilia Lepida, for example. How Cato had loved her when he was eighteen! As silly as a Greek over a young boy. But all Aemilia Lepida had been doing was using Cato to make Metellus Scipio come crawling.
    Servilia said, apropos of nothing, “I saw Aemilia Lepida at Aurelia's today. How well she looks! A real little wife and mother. She says she's more in love with Metellus Scipio than ever.”
    The barb visibly lodged; Cato went white. “She used me as bait to get him back,” he said bitterly. “A typical woman—sly, deceitful, unprincipled.”
    “Is that how you think of your own wife?” asked Servilia with a broad smile, eyes dancing.
    “Atilia is my wife. If Aemilia Lepida had honored her promise and married me, she would soon have found out that I tolerate no woman's tricks. Atilia does as she's told and lives an exemplary life. I will permit nothing less than perfect behavior.”
    “Poor Atilia! Would you order her killed if you smelled wine on her breath? The Twelve Tables allow you to do so, and you're an ardent supporter of antique laws.”
    “I am an ardent supporter of the old ways, the customs and traditions of Rome's mos maiorum,” he blared, the nose squeezing its nostrils until they looked like blisters on either side of it. “My son, my daughter, she and I eat food she has personally seen prepared, live in rooms she has personally seen tended, and wear clothing she has personally spun, woven and sewn.”
    “Is that why you're so bare? What a drudge she must be!”
    “Atilia lives an exemplary life,” he repeated. “I do not condone farming the children out to servants and nannies, so she has the full responsibility for a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. Atilia is fully occupied.”
    “As I said, she's a drudge. You can afford enough servants, Cato, and she knows that. Instead, you pinch your purse and make her a servant. She won't thank you.” The thick white eyelids lifted, Servilia's ironic black gaze traveled from his toes to his head. “One day, Cato, you might come home early and discover that she's seeking a little extramarital solace. Who could blame her? You'd look so pretty wearing horns on your head!”
    But that shaft went wide; Cato simply looked smug. “Oh, no chance of that,” he said confidently. “Even in these inflated times I may not exceed my great-grandfather's top price for a slave, but I assure you that I choose people who fear me. I am scrupulously just—no servant worth his salt suffers under my care!—but every servant belongs to me, and knows it.”
    “An idyllic domestic arrangement,” said Servilia, smiling. “I must remember to tell Aemilia Lepida what she's