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her that there were many women of her own class who also suffered terrible torments of jealousy or frustration.
    No, when Caesar came home for good there was going to be trouble. Aurelia had no doubt of it. But put it aside for the day when it happened, and in the meantime enjoyed herself thoroughly, and didn’t worry about her three little impeccably aristocratic patricians, or which language they fancied speaking today. After all, didn’t the same sort of thing occur on the Palatine and the Carinae, when women gave their children into the charge of nurserymaids from every part of the globe? Only then the results were ignored, swept under the edge of some piece of furniture; even the children became conspirators at the art, and concealed what they felt for the girls and women they knew far better than they did their mothers.
    Baby Gaius Julius, however, was a special case, and a very difficult one; even the capable Aurelia felt the breath of some unknown menace upon the back of her neck whenever she stopped long enough to think about this only son, about his qualities and his future. That he drove her to the brink of madness she had admitted to Julia and Aelia at Julia’s dinner party, and now was glad she had displayed this weakness, for out of it had come a suggestion from Aelia that Young Caesar be placed in the charge of a pedagogue.
    Aurelia had heard of extremely bright children, naturally, but had long ago assumed that they came from poorer, humbler circumstances than the senatorial order; it was Marcus Aurelius Cotta, her uncle and stepfather, their parents had come to see, to solicit from him the wherewithal to give their extremely bright child a better start in life than they could afford—and in return to pledge themselves and their child as clients in his service for the rest of their lives. Cotta had always been pleased to oblige them, happy to think that when the child grew up, he and his sons would be able to avail themselves of the services of someone superlatively gifted. However, Cotta was also a practical and sensible man, so, as Aurelia had heard him say to his wife, Rutilia, one day,
    “Unfortunately they don’t always live up to their promise, these children. Either their early flame burns too brightly, and they grow dark and cold and inert, or else they become too conceited or too confident, and come crashing down. But a few turn out to be of great use. And when they’re useful, they’re great treasures. that’s why I always agree to help the parents.”
    What Cotta and Rutilia (who was Aurelia’s mother) thought of their extremely gifted grandchild Young Caesar, Aurelia didn’t know, for she had hidden her son’s precociousness from them as much as she could by not exposing him to them. In fact, she tried to hide Young Caesar from everyone. On one level his brilliance thrilled her, inspired her with all kinds of dreams for his future. But on most levels he depressed her deeply. Had she known his weaknesses and his flaws, she could have coped with him more easily; but who—even a mother—could possibly know the innate character weaknesses and flaws of a child not yet two years old? Before she held him up to satisfy the curiosity of the world, she wanted to feel more securely informed about him, more comfortable with him. And ever at the back of her mind there loomed the dread that he would not contain the strength and the detachment to deal with what a freak of nature had given him.
    He was sensitive, she knew that; to crush him was easy. But he bounced back, possessed of some alien and therefore incomprehensible joyousness of being that she herself had never known. His enthusiasm was boundless, his mental processes so thirsty for information that he gobbled up knowledge like some vast fish the contents of its sea. What worried her most was his trustfulness, his anxiety to make friends of everyone, his impatience with her cautions to stop and think, that he not take it for granted that the