The Temple of the Muses Read Online Free PDF

family was desired. Caius Julius’s own daughter was already promised to Pompey, but his brother Lucius had an unmarried younger daughter. Hence, we were betrothed.
    “Welcome to Alexandria!” I cried. I took Fausta’s hand briefly; then Julia presented her cheek to be kissed. I obliged.
    “You’ve put on weight, Decius,” she said.
    “What a flatterer you are,” I said. “These Egyptians feel they’ve failed their gods if they allow a Roman to walk a step more than necessary, and who am I to interfere in their devotion to piety?” I turned to Fausta. “Lady Fausta, your beauty adorns this royal city like a crown. I trust you had a pleasant voyage?”
    “We’ve been heaving our guts out since we left Ostia,” she said.
    “I assure you, the accommodations here will more than make up for the rigors of a winter voyage.” The slaves had been unloading their baggage during all this. By the time it was all ashore, the ship rode a foot higher in the water. The ladies were attended by their personal maids, of course, and a few other slaves. They would be lost among the multitude at the embassy.
    “Is Alexandria as fabulous as I’ve always heard?” Julia asked, excited despite her rather drawn and haggard appearance.
    “Beyond your wildest imaginings,” I vowed. “It shall be my greatest pleasure to show it all to you.”
    Fausta smiled obliquely. “Even those low dives where you’ve no doubt been disporting yourself?”
    “No need,” I said. “The very basest of amusements are to be
had at the Palace.” At that even the notorious Fausta looked a bit nonplussed.
    “Well, I want to see the more elevated sights,” Julia said, crawling wearily into her litter and inadvertently treating me to a flash of the whitest thigh I had ever seen. “I want to see the Museum and converse with the scholars and attend lectures by all the famous, learned men.” Julia had that tiresome love of culture and education that infected Roman ladies.
    “I shall be only too happy to introduce you,” I said. “I am intimate with the faculty.” Actually, I had been there only once, to visit an old friend. Who wants to consort with a pack of tiresome old pedants when some of the finest racehorses in the world are exercising in the Hippodrome?
    “Really?” she said, eyebrows going up. “Then you must introduce me to Eumenes of Caria, the logician, and Sosigenes, the astronomer, and Iphicrates of Chios, the mathematician. And I must tour the Library!”
    “Libraries,” I corrected. “There are two of them, you know.” I sought to change the subject and turned to Fausta. “And how is my good friend Milo?”
    “Busy as ever,” she said. “Fighting all the time with Clodius. He’s secured a quaestorship, you know.”
    “I heard,” I said, laughing. “Somehow I can’t picture Milo working away in the Grain Office or the treasury.” Milo was the most successful gangster Rome had ever seen.
    “Don’t bother. He works out of his headquarters as always. I think he’s hired somebody to carry out his duties as quaestor. He sends you his warmest regards, by the way. He says you’ll never amount to anything if you spend all your time lazing away in foreign lands instead of working in Rome.”
    “Well, dear Titus has always extolled the benefits of hard work and diligence. I, on the other hand, have always felt these to be virtues proper to slaves and freedmen. Look at how hard these litter-bearers work. Does it do them any good?”
    “I knew you would say something like that,” Julia said, sitting
up and craning her neck to take in the magnificence through which we were carried.
    “The men destined for greatness are all fighting it out in Rome right now,” Fausta said.
    “And every one of them will die on a battlefield, or from poison or the dagger of the assassin,” I maintained stoutly. “I, on the other hand, intend to expire of old age with the rank of Senior Senator.”
    “I suppose every man must have his