Read Online The Temple of the Muses by John Maddox Roberts - Free Book Online

had ever fathomed.
    “Maybe you can go home soon, Decius,” Rufus said. “You’re betrothed to Caesar’s niece, so he’ll keep Clodius reined in while he’s Consul.”
    “I’m not afraid of Clodius,” I said, not quite truthfully.
    “The sight of you two fighting in the Forum is embarrassing to the family,” Creticus said. “Fear is immaterial. You’ll go home when the family calls you back.”
    “Oh, well, so much for that,” I said. “By the way, I’ve just learned that the queen is pregnant.” I told them what I had learned from Hermes.
    “A gentleman should not listen to slave gossip,” Creticus snorted.
    “Slave gossip has kept me not only informed but, on more than one occasion, alive,” I retorted. “I think this is reliable.”
    We talked over the likely implications. Predictably, all bemoaned the likelihood of another son, which would complicate Roman-Egyptian relations. The gathering broke up on that sour note.
    The next day I escorted Julia to the Paneum. This was one of Alexandria’s more eccentric sights, an artificial hill with a spiral path ascending it and the Paneum itself at the top. It was not a true temple. That is to say, there was no priesthood, and no sacrifices
were offered there. Rather, it was a shrine to the much-beloved god.
    The climb up the spiral path was a long one, but it was beautifully landscaped, with the path paralleled by a strip of well-planted ground adorned with tall poplars, studded with odd little grottoes and alive with statues of Pan’s woodland followers. Fauns capered, satyrs chased nymphs, dryads disported themselves all the way up the hill.
    At the top was a shrine without walls, consisting of a roof supported by slender pillars, for who would confine a sylvan god like Pan within walls? Beneath the roof was a bronze statue of the god, half again as tall as a man, horned and cloven-hoofed, goat-legged, dancing ecstatically with his syrinx in one hand.
    “How beautiful!” Julia said as we passed between the pillars. And then: “Goodness!” She was staring at the god’s far-famed attribute; a rampantly erect penis which, on a man, would have somewhat exceeded his forearm in size.
    “Surprised?” I said. “Every herm in every garden is similarly equipped.”
    “But not so heroically,” Julia said, her eyes wide. “I pity the nymphs.”
    “Now, Fausta would have said that she envied them.” That lady had decided to spend the day among the self-flagellating priestesses of Baal-Ahriman. She had an altogether livelier breadth of interest than Julia.
    “Fausta places an excessive value on physical things,” Julia said. “Hence her interest in your odious friend Milo.”
    “Milo is intelligent, eloquent, forceful, ambitious and is destined for great things in Roman politics,” I pointed out.
    “Others have the same qualifications. He is also violent, unscrupulous and balks at nothing to advance himself. Also common qualities, I grant you. What makes him unique, and desirable as far as Fausta is concerned, is that he has the face and body of a god.”
    “Is that his fault? And Cornelian standards are rather high in that area. In all of Rome, who is a match for Fausta but Milo?”

    She snorted a delicate, patrician snort. “Why should she bother? It’s not as if they are going to be seen in public. Roman husbands won’t even sit with their wives at the Circus. They do make a striking couple, though. She is so fair and delicate, he is so dark and brawny. And his bearing is as arrogant as hers, even though his birth is so much lower.”
    I smiled to myself. Even Julia admired Milo, although she would never admit it directly. Virtually every woman in Rome did. Serving-girls scrawled his name on the walls as if he were some reigning gladiator or charioteer. “Handsome Milo,” they called him, declaring that they were soon to expire of passion for him, frequently going into indecent detail. Julia would never be so shameless, but she was not