House Of The Vestals Read Online Free PDF

blue-black spiderwebs and silver. It was also most expensive item in the shop. I chided him for taunting me with a luxury beyond my means.
    Ruso shrugged good-naturedly. "One never knows; might have just been playing dice, and won a fortune by casting the Venus Throw. Here, these are more affordable." He smiled and laid a selection before me.
    "No," I said, seeing nothing I liked, "I've changed my mind."
    "Then something in a lighter blue, perhaps.? A bright blue, like the sky."
    "No, I think not-"
    "Ah, but see what I have to show you first. Felix… Felix! Fetch me one of the new veils that just arrived from Alexandria, the bright blue ones with yellow stitching."
    The young slave bit his lip nervously and seemed to cringe. This struck me as odd, for I knew Ruso to be a temperate man and not a cruel master.
    "Go on, then-what are you waiting for.?" Ruso turned to me and shook his head. "This new slave-worse than useless! I don't think he's very smart, no matter what the slave merchant said. He keeps the books well enough, but here in the shop- look, he's done it again! Unbelievable! Felix, what is wrong with you? Do you do this just to spite me? Do you want a beating? I won't put up with this any longer, I tell you!"
    The slave shrank back, looking confused and helpless. In his hand he held a yellow veil.
    "All the time he does this!" wailed Ruso, clutching his head.
    "He wants to drive me mad! I ask for blue and he brings me yellow! I ask for yellow and he brings me blue! Have you ever heard of such stupidity? I shall beat you, Felix, I swear it!" He ran after the poor slave, brandishing a measuring rod. And then I understood.
     
    My friend Statilius, as I had expected, was not at his lodgings in the Subura. When I questioned his landlord, the old man gave me the sly look of a confederate charged with throwing hounds off the scent, and told me that Statilius had left Rome for the countryside.
    He was in none of the usual places where he might have been on a festival day. No tavern had served him and no brothel had admitted him. He would not even think of appearing in a gambling house, I told myself-and then knew that the exact opposite must be true.
    Once I began to search the gaming places in the Subura, I found him easily enough. In a crowded apartment on the third floor of an old tenement I discovered him in the midst of a crowd of well-dressed men, some of them even wearing their togas. Statilius was down on his elbows and knees, shaking a tiny box and muttering prayers to Fortune. He cast the dice; the crowd contracted in a tight circle and then drew back, exclaiming. The throw was a good one: III, III, III and VI-the Remus Throw.
    "Yes! Yes!" Statilius cried, and held out his palms. The others handed over their coins.
    I grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and pulled him squawking into the hall.
    "I should think you're deeply enough in debt already," I said.
    "Quite the contrary!" he protested, smiling broadly. His face was flushed and his forehead beaded with sweat, like a man with a fever.
    "Just how much do you owe Flavius the moneylender?"
    "A hundred thousand sesterces."
    "A hundred thousand!" My heart leaped into my throat.
    "But not any longer. You see, I'll be able to pay him of now!" He held up the coins in his hands. "I have two bags full of silver in the other room, where my slave's looking after them. And-can you believe it?-a deed to a house on the Caelian Hill. I've won my way out of it, don't you see?"
    "At the expense of another man's life."
    His grin became sheepish. "So, you've figured that out. But who could have foreseen such a tragedy? Certainly not I. And when it happened, I didn't rejoice in Panurgus's death-you saw that. I didn't hate him, not really. My jealousy was purely professional. But if the Fates decided better him than me, who am I to argue?"
    "You're a worm, Statilius. Why didn't you tell Roscius what you knew? Why didn't you tell me?"
    "What did I know, really? Someone completely