The Venus Throw Read Free

accent. He wearily pushed back the mantle from his head. His silver hair was pulled back from his face and knotted at the back of his neck. His forehead was wrinkled and covered with spots. The folds of flesh hanging from his chin quivered and he suddenly looked ridiculous, an unhappy old man with painted cheeks and painted eyes.
    The eunuch in the toga covered his mouth and giggled tipsily. “But you look so pretty in makeup!”
    “Enough of that!” growled the old Egyptian. His mouth settled in a deep frown and his jowls drooped as he stared bleakly into the flames, his eyes full of despair.

chapter
Two
    T his is my daughter, Gordiana, whom we call Diana.” I took her soft, smooth hand in mine. “Diana, we are honored by the presence of Dio of Alexandria: philosopher, teacher, esteemed member of the Academy, and currently the chief ambassador to Rome from the people of Egypt.”
    With the unstudied dignity of a distinguished man used to being formally introduced and hearing his titles recited, Dio stood, clasping his hands before him, pulling his shoulders back. His self-possession seemed peculiarly at odds with his strange costume; with his painted face and his feminine garments he looked like the priest of some eastern cult—which was precisely what his companion turned out to be.
    “And this,” said Dio, gesturing to the little eunuch, who likewise stood, though a bit tipsily, “is Trygonion, a priest at the Temple of Cybele here in Rome.”
    The eunuch took a little bow and pulled off his hat, from which tumbled a mass of pale yellow hair. The color was a bleached, unnatural shade of blond. He ran his fingers through his hair and chook his head to untangle the curls.
    “A philosopher . . . and a gallus!” Diana said wonderingly. The last word gave me a start.
Gallus
is the Latin term for a castrated priest of the Great Mother, Cybele. Allthe galli are foreigners, since by law no Roman can become one. The word is pious in the mouths of the goddess’s adherents, but others sometimes use it as a vulgar epithet (“You filthy gallus!”); the idea of men becoming eunuchs, even in the service of the divine, remains foreign and repulsive to most Romans. I couldn’t remember ever having taught the word to Diana, but then she is always coming out with things I never taught her. She learns them from her mother, I suspect.
    “Yes,” Dio said ruefully, “puzzle that, Gordianus: what could a philosopher and a gallus possibly have in common—the man who lives by reason, and the man whose life is the surrender of all reason? Ha! Circumstances make strange bedmates. The more desperate the circumstances, the odder the bedmates.” He cast a sidelong, gloomy glance at the eunuch, then suddenly looked doubtful. “I do not intend this metaphor literally, of course. You do have this phrase in Latin, yes? About circumstances and bedmates?”
    “Something close enough.”
    He nodded, satisfied that he had made himself understood. His Latin was in fact impeccable, though his accent was distinctly Alexandrian, with the particular inflections of those born in Egypt whose ancestry and primary tongue are Greek. Hearing him speak freely, I now recalled his voice from many years ago. It had grown coarser with age, but was undeniably the same voice I had listened to so attentively on the steps outside the temple of Serapis in Alexandria when I was a young man, eager to learn all I could about the world. Dio’s voice took me far back in memory and far away from Rome.
    Introductions finished, we sat, except for Diana, who excused herself and left the room, no doubt to go tell her mother.
    Dio cleared his throat. “You remember me, then?”
    “Teacher,” I said, for that was what I had always called him in Alexandria, and it now felt awkward to call him byhis name, though I was long past the age of deference, “of course I remember you. You’d be a hard man to forget!”
    “I had thought, after so many years . . . And then,