I gathered my thoughts, tried to place things in order, the way Callista would have organized one of her philosophical tracts. “This is something we’ve seen coming, but we’ve all been so in awe of Caesar that we haven’t wanted to recognize it. We are reluctant to believe he has the same weaknesses as any other mortal. A few days ago he tongue-lashed a foreign envoy as you would an insolent slave, in front of the whole Senate. He’s planning a major foreign war without having quite finished the last one. He plans to completely rebuild Rome to his own liking without any really clear idea what to do with the Rome that is already here. He is bringing long-haired barbarians into the Senate without even Romanizing them first! All right, that last one could actually improve the tone of the place, but you get the idea. He isn’t rational anymore, but he can carry it off because he seems so rational.
“Now he wants to be pharaoh, with Cleopatra’s aid”—I looked at Callista—“and that is why I think you shouldn’t go back to Alexandria. He wants to conquer Parthia but Egypt is the real prize in this game. Alexandria got badly damaged the last time he was there. It could be far worse this time.”
“He is right,” Julia acknowledged. “Stay at our villa. Or if you must leave Italy, go to Athens. You could teach there.”
“I deeply appreciate your concern,” Callista said, “but I belong in Alexandria. If that is where the world is to end, then that is precisely where I should be.” She smiled. “Besides, they don’t let women teach in Athens. There hasn’t been any new thought in Athens since Aristotle. Ah, here we are.”
We had arrived at Cleopatra’s, and a greater contrast to Callista’s house would be hard to imagine. Legions of slaves helped us from our litters as if we were a visitation of cripples. Golden cups brimming with rare vintages were pressed into our hands. Lest we grow bored between litter and doorway, jugglers and tumblers performed for us, bears and baboons danced, people in white robes strummed upon lyres and sang. Atop the wall, a line of near-naked men and women walked on their hands, tossing balls to one another and catching them with their feet in a bewildering yet seemingly orderly fashion. Julia and some of the other women gathered together, apparently for mutual protection and made their way inside.
“This is more like it!” Antonius proclaimed. “I thought listening to those astronomers would turn me to stone.”
“You were listening?” Lepidus said coldly, but the prospect of a really degenerate party had put Antonius in such a good mood that he ignored the sour-faced Master of Horse. Brutus and Cassius were huddled together and Sallustius looked like a man about to reap a great harvest of drunken gossip. We passed inside where, though it was not quite dark, things had reached a truly demented stage. Antonius grinned. “I’m going to have to get to know Cleopatra better.”
As intrigued as I was by the lively goings-on, I knew better than to participate too fully with Julia present somewhere. Besides, I was hungry. With Hermes in tow I went in search of dinner, keeping a wary eye out for homicidal pygmies. We went past a pond full of crocodiles. People tried to tempt the awful beasts with fish and other delicacies, but the scaly monsters remained torpid. Another pool was full of hippos that splashed guests with water and noxious fluids. Signs in several languages warned that hippos are far more ill-tempered than they look. Cheetahs wandered freely. I hoped our hostess didn’t have lions in her menagerie.
It wasn’t difficult to find something to eat. The main problem was locating something small enough to get into my mouth. There were tables laden with entire roast animals, many of them exotic African species. I found a skewer of small grilled birds rolled in honey and sesame seeds, and I began to pick them off one at a time.
“Look at these oysters,” Hermes said, lifting a plate of them. “There’s a pearl in every one of them. Do they come that way naturally?”
“I don’t think so. You can eat the oysters, but keep the pearls.”
“Keep them where?” he said, downing an oyster.
“Tie them up in a corner of your toga. You have enough material there to hold the loot of Tigranocerta.”
“I know,” he said, downing another. “This thing is hot.”
I finished the spit and looked for something else. The laboriously exotic items like flamingo tongues and camel’s toes were tedious and often disgusting, but I found enough items fit for human consumption to stave off starvation. Hermes handed me a platter of small pastries stuffed with chopped ham and goat cheese and spinach. They were resting on oak leaves made of hammered gold, which I kept. Soon I was ready to see what was going on this night.