Augustus Read Free Page A

his advice at least. He recommends you start in the middle of action.
    Therefore: here we are: Greece, late March, blustery and cold, snow on the mountains, in my nineteenth year.
    * * *
    As we lay in the rest-room after our baths Maecenas ran his hand over my thigh.
    'You see, my dear, I was quite right. Red-hot walnut shells are absolutely it. You have such pretty legs, ducky, it's a shame to spoil them with fuzz.'
    And then, with his hand still stroking me just above the knee, and Agrippa snorting something about bloody effeminate dirt from the next couch - then - it is a scene I hold clear as a vase-painting - the curtain was thrown aside, and a slave burst in, with no ceremony at all.
    'Which of you is Gaius Octavius Thurinus?' he cried.
    'This one is,' Maecenas said, not moving his hand. But I sat up, shaking him off. When slaves forget their manners, all the more reason to behave decently. The man thrust a letter into my outstretched hand, and disappeared without waiting for a reward. (I know why he did that; he was aware he was the bearer of bad news - slaves always know what their missives contain, I suppose they check with the secretaries and it is passed down the line - but in this case of course he could hardly have failed to know what the whole world would ring of - and he had all the Greek superstitious fear of the fate that waits the bringer of evil tidings.)
    I turned it over. 'It's from my mother,' I said.
    'Oh God,' Maecenas said, 'mothers.'
    'That's no way to talk,' Agrippa said.
    'Well, who's little Miss Good Citizen now?'
    Their bickering is memory's sour accompaniment to the solo of my mother's letter. It was short enough for something that shook the world:
    My son, your uncle Julius was this day murdered in the Senate House by his enemies. I write that bluntly because there is no way to prepare such news. And I say merely 'his enemies' because all here is uncertainty. No one knows what may happen, whether this is the beginning of new wars or not. Therefore, my child, be careful. Nevertheless the time has come when you must play the man, decide and act, for no one knows or can tell what things may now come forth.
    I let the letter drop. (One of the others picked it up and what they read silenced them.) I let my fingers play over my smooth legs and bare chin, and wondered if I was going to cry. I have always cried easily, but I had no tears for Julius either then or later.
    Very soon there was a clamour without. We dressed hurriedly in some apprehension. One does in such circumstances. No one likes to be caught naked when there is danger of sword-play. My mind was full of all that I had heard and read of the proscriptions in the struggle between Sulla and Marius; how Julius himself had nearly lost his life then, for, said Sulla, 'in that young man there are many Mariuses.' I could not be certain that the slave who had brought the message was not the precursor of those who had constituted themselves my enemies as well as Julius's. I was his next-of-kin; it would make sense to dispose of me. I was indeed prudent to have such fears, for my death would have been an act of prudence on their part.
    They should have killed me. I wonder when they realized that themselves. It is known that they regretted not putting Antony to death at the same time as my uncle. Cassius, wise man, wished to do so. The ostentatiously virtuous Marcus Brutus over-ruled him. The truth is, there was never so thoughtless a conspiracy. They imagined, these self-styled Liberators, these besotted idealists, these disgruntled fools, that if they killed Julius, the Republic would resume its old stability of its own accord. They were futile men, without foresight.
    That night in Il lyria Agrippa organized a guard for me, alert to our peril. I had gone out before the crowd and stilled their tumult. To express grief for Julius, I tore my clothes (Maecenas having first thoughtfully run a knife along the seam). I begged the crowd, whose grief I