entertained his conservative and somewhat old-fashioned Senatorial friends, and sometimes 
Caesar Augustus himself. Caesar Augustus was an agreeable man. I don't think my Father 
ever really wanted him at our house, however. But now and then, I suppose, the Emperor 
had to be wined and dined.
  I'd rush in with my nurse, give a rousing recital and then be whisked away to where I 
could not see the proud Senators of Rome glutting themselves on peacock brains and garum 
- surely you know what garum is. It's the horrible sauce the Romans put on everything, 
rather like today's ketchup. Definitely it defeated the purpose of having eels and squids 
on your plate, or ostrich brains or unborn lamb or whatever other absurd delicacies were 
being brought by the platterful.
  The point is, as you know, the Romans seemed to have a special place in their hearts 
for genuine gluttony, and the banquets inevitably became a disgrace. The guests would go 
off to the vomitorium of the house to heave up the first five courses of the meal so that 
they could then swallow the others. And I would lie upstairs, giggling in my bed, 
listening to all this laughter and vomiting. Then the rape of the entire catering staff 
of slaves would follow, whether they were boys or girls or a mixture of both.
  Family meals were an entirely different affair. Then we were old Romans. Everyone sat 
at the table; my Father was undisputed Master of his house, and would tolerate no 
criticism of Caesar Augustus, who, as you know, was Julius Caesar's nephew, and did not 
really rule as Emperor by law.
  "When the time is right, he will step down," said my Father. "He knows he can't do it 
now. He is more weary and wise than ever he was ambitious. Who wants another Civil War?"
  The times were actually too prosperous for men of stature to make a revolt.
  Augustus kept the peace. He had profound respect for the Roman Senate. He rebuilt old 
Temples because he thought people needed the piety they had known under the Republic.
  He gave free corn from Egypt to the poor. Nobody starved in Rome. He maintained a 
dizzying amount of old festivals, games and spectacles - enough to sicken one actually. 
But often as patriotic Romans we had to be there.
  Of course there was great cruelty in the arena. There were cruel executions. There was 
the ever present cruelty of slavery.
  But what is not understood by those today is that there coexisted with all this a sense 
of individual freedom on the part of even the poorest man.
  The courts took time over their decisions. They consulted the past laws. They followed 
logic and code. People could speak their minds fairly openly.
  I note this because it is key to this story: that Marius and I both were born in a time 
when Roman law was, as Marius would say, based on reason, as opposed to divine revelation.
  We are totally unlike those blood drinkers brought to Darkness in lands of Magic and 
Mystery.
  Not only did we trust Augustus when we were alive, we also believed in the tangible 
power of the Roman Senate. We believed in public virtue and character; we held to a way 
of life which did not involve rituals, prayers, magic, except superficially. Virtue was 
embedded in character. That was the inheritance of the Roman Republic, which Marius and I 
shared.
  Of course, our house was overcrowded with slaves. There were brilliant Greeks and 
grunting laborers and a fleet of women to rush about polishing busts and vases, and the 
city itself was choked with manumitted slaves - freedmen - some of whom were very rich.
  They were all our people, our slaves.
  My Father and I sat up all night when my old Greek teacher was dying. We held his hands 
until the body was cold. Nobody was flogged on our estate in Rome unless my Father 
himself gave the order. Our country slaves loafed under the fruit trees. Our stewards 
were rich, and showed off their wealth in their clothes.
  I remember a time when there were so many old Greek slaves in the garden that I could 
sit day after day and listen to them argue. They had nothing else to do. I learned much 
from this.
  I grew up more than happy. If you think I exaggerate the extent of my education, 
consult the letters of Pliny or other actual memoirs and correspondence of the times. 
Highborn young girls were well educated; modern Roman women went about unhampered for the 
most part by male interference. We partook of life as did men.
  For example, I was scarcely eight years old when I was first taken to the arena with 
several of my brothers' wives, to have the dubious pleasure of seeing exotic creatures, 
such as giraffes, tear madly around before being shot to death with arrows, this display 
then followed by a small group of gladiators who would hack other gladiators to death, 
and then after that came the flock of criminals to be fed to the hungry lions.
  David, I can hear the sound of those lions as if it were now. There's nothing between 
me and the moment that I sat in the wooden benches, perhaps two rows up - the premium 
seats - and I watched these beasts devour living beings, as I was supposed to do, with a 
pleasure meant to demonstrate a strength of heart, a fearlessness in the face of death, 
rather than simple and utter monstrousness.
  The audience screamed and laughed as men and women ran from the beasts. Some victims 
would give the crowd no such satisfaction. They merely stood there as the hungry lion 
attacked; those who were being devoured alive almost invariably lay in a stupor as though 
their souls had already taken flight, though the lion had not reached the throat.
  I remember the smell of it. But more than anything, I remember the noise of the crowd.
  I passed the test of character, I could look at all of it. I could watch the champion 
gladiator finally meet his end, lying there bloody in the sand, as the sword went through 
his chest.
  But I can certainly remember my Father declaring under his breath that the whole affair 
was disgusting. In fact, everybody I knew thought it was all disgusting. My Father 
believed, as did others, that the common man needed all this blood. We, the highborn, had 
to preside over it for the common man. It had a religious quality to it, all this 
spectacular viciousness.
  The making of these appalling spectacles was considered something of a social 
responsibility.
  Also Roman life was a life of being outdoors, involved in things, attending ceremonies 
and spectacles, being seen, taking an interest, coming together with others.
  You came together with all the other highborn and lowborn of the city and you joined in 
one mass to witness a triumphant procession, a great offering at the altar of Augustus, 
an ancient ceremony, a game, a chariot race.
  Now in the Twentieth Century, when I watch the endless intrigue and slaughter in motion 
pictures and on television throughout our Western world, I wonder if people do not need 
it, do not need to see murder, slaughter, death in all forms. Television at times seems 
an unbroken series of gladiatorial fights or massacres. And look at the traffic now in 
video recordings of actual war.
  Records of war have become art and entertainment.
  The narrator speaks softly as the camera passes over the heap of bodies, or the 
skeletal children sobbing with their starving mothers. But it is gripping. One can 
wallow, shaking one's head, in all this death. Nights of television are devoted to old 
footage of men dying with guns in their hands.
  I think we look because we are afraid. But in Rome, you had to look so that you would 
be hard, and that applied to women as well as men.