educated woman in Rome, women had immense freedom, and I had a rich Senator for a father, 
five prosperous brothers, and grew up Motherless but cherished by teams of Greek tutors 
and nurses who gave me everything I wanted.
  Now, if I really wanted to make this difficult for you, David, I'd write it in 
classical Latin. But I won't. And I must tell you that, unlike you, I came by my 
education in English haphazardly, and certainly I never learnt it from Shakespeare's 
plays.
  Indeed I have passed through many stages of the English language in my wanderings and 
in my reading, but the great majority of my true acquaintance with it has been in this 
century, and I am writing for you in colloquial English.
  There's another reason For this, which I'm sure you'll understand if you've read the 
modern translation of Petronius's Satyricon or Juvenal's satires. Very modern English is 
a really true equivalent to the Latin of my time.
  The formal letters of Imperial Rome won't tell you this. But the graffiti scratched on 
the walls of Pompeii will make it obvious. We had a sophisticated tongue, countless 
clever verbal shortcuts and common expressions.
  I'm going to write, therefore, in the English which feels equivalent and natural to me.
  Let me say here quickly - while the action is at a halt - that I was never, as Marius 
said, a Greek Courtesan. I was living with such a pretense when Marius gave me the Dark 
Gift, and perhaps out of consideration for old mortal secrets he so described me. Or 
maybe it was contemptuous of him to style me this way. I don't know.
  But Marius knew all about my Roman family, that it was a Senatorial family, as purely 
aristocratic and privileged as his own mortal family, and that my people dated back to 
the time of Romulus and Remus, the same as Marius's mortal line. Marius did not succumb 
to me because I had "beautiful arms," as he indicated to Lestat. This trivialization was 
perhaps provocative.
  I don't hold anything against either of them, Marius or Lestat. I don't know who got 
what wrong.
  My feeling for my Father is so great to this very night, as I sit in the cafe, writing 
for you, David, that I am astonished at the power of writing - of putting words to paper 
and bringing back so vividly to myself my Father's loving face.
  My Father was to meet a terrible end. He did not deserve what happened to him. But some 
of our kinsmen survived and re-established our family in later times.
  My Father was rich, one of the true millionaires of that age, and his capital was 
invested widely. He was a soldier more often than required of him, a Senator, a 
thoughtful and quiet man by disposition. And after the terrors of the Civil War, he was a 
great supporter of Caesar Augustus and very much in the Emperor's good graces.
  Of course he dreamed that the Roman Republic would come back; we all did. But Augustus 
had brought unity and peace to the Empire.
  I met Augustus many times in my youth, and it was always at some crowded social 
function and of no consequence. He looked like his portraits; a lean man with a long thin 
nose, short hair, average face; he was rather rational and pragmatic by nature and not 
invested with any abnormal cruelty. He had no personal vanity.
  The poor man was really blessed that he couldn't see into the future - that he had no 
inkling of all the horrors and madness that would begin with Tiberius, his successor, and 
go on for so long under other members of his family.
  Only in later times did I understand the full singularity and accomplishment of 
Augustus's long reign. Was it forty-four years of peace throughout the cities of the 
Empire?
  Alas, to be born during this time was to be born during a time of creativity and 
prosperity, when Rome was caput mundi, or capital of the world. And when I look back on 
it, I realize what a powerful combination it was to have both tradition and vast sums of 
money; to have old values and new power.
  Our family life was conservative, strict, even a little dusty. And yet we had every 
luxury. My Father grew more quiet and conservative over the years. He enjoyed his 
grandchildren, who were born while he was still vigorous and active.
  Though he had fought principally in the Northern campaigns along the Rhine, he had been 
stationed in Syria for a while. He had studied in Athens. He had served so much and so 
well that he was being allowed an early retirement in the years during which I grew up, 
an early withdrawal from the social life that whirled around the Imperial Palace, though 
I did not realize this at the time.
  My five brothers came before me. So there was no "ritual Roman mourning" when I was 
born, as you hear tell of in Roman families when a girl comes into the world. Far from it.
  Five times my Father had stood in the atrium - the main enclosed courtyard, or 
peristyle, of our house with its pillars and stairs and grand marble-work - five times he 
had stood there before the assembled family and held in his hands a newborn son, 
inspected it and then pronounced it perfect and fit to be reared as his own, as was his 
prerogative. Now, you know he had the power of life and death over his sons from that 
moment on.
  If my Father hadn't wanted these boys for any reason, he would have "exposed" them to 
die of starvation. It was against the law to steal such a child and make it a slave.
  Having five boys already, my Father was expected by some to get rid of me immediately. 
Who needs a girl? But my Father never exposed or rejected any of my Mother's children.
  And by the time I arrived, I'm told, he cried for joy.
  "Thank the gods! A little darling.", I heard the story ad nauseam from my brothers, 
who, every time I acted up - did something unseemly, frisky and wild - said sneeringly, 
"Thank the gods, a little darling!" It became a charming goad.
  My Mother died when I was two, and all I recall of her are gentleness and sweetness. 
She'd lost as many children as she had birthed, and early death was typical enough. Her 
Epitaph was beautifully written by my Father, and her memory honored throughout my life. 
My Father never took another woman into the house. He slept with a few of the female 
slaves, but this was nothing unusual. My brothers did the same thing. This was common in 
a Roman household. My Father brought no new woman from another family to rule over me.
  There is no grief in me for my Mother because I was simply too young for it, and if I 
cried when my Mother did not come back, I don't remember it.
  What I remember is having the run of a big old rectangular palatial Roman house, with 
many rectangular rooms built onto the main rectangle, one off another, the whole nestled 
in a huge garden high on the Palatine Hill. It was a house of marble floors and richly 
painted walls, the garden meandering and surrounding every room of it.
  I was the true jewel of my Father's eye, and I remember having a marvelous time 
watching my brothers practice outside with their short broadswords, or listening as their 
tutors instructed them, and then having fine teachers of my own who taught me how to read 
the entire Aeneid of Virgil before I was five years old.
  I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have 
fallen into the joy of writing them. I couldn't have told you that nights ago, David. 
You've brought back something to me and I must make the admission. And I must not write 
too fast in this mortal cafe, lest human beings notice!
  Ah, so we continue.
  My Father thought it was hysterical that I could recite verses from Virgil at so young 
an age and he liked nothing better than to show me off at banquets at which he