"Am I so hideous?" she demanded.
"You are the loveliest woman alive," I vowed. "But Marcia is amazingly spectacular and the pictures she makes impress themselves on one's memory and eyesight. I could never forget her in that brilliant tableau on the camp-platform facing the mutineers, even if I had never seen her before."
"I was coming to that," Vedia said. "Marcia, who was a foundling and a slave as the adopted child of a slave, has risen so high that she is truly Empress in all but the official title. She has all the honors Faustina or Crispina ever had, except that she keeps out of those religious rites, participation in which is confined to women married with the full old-time ceremonies and observances."
I then told her what Agathemer and I had heard about Marcia while domiciled with Colgius, and of the absence from all talk about her of any mention of or allusion to Marcus Martius; I asked if she knew what had become of him or, indeed, anything about him.
"Oh, yes," she said, "all Roman society knew the main facts and dear old Tanno supplied me with many of the intimate details. Commodus made a point of having Martius specially presented to him because he had heard that he had been, with you and Tanno, one of the foremost fighters in your affrays in Vediamnum and near Villa Satronia. At his private audience he congratulated and bepraised Martius and acclaimed his prowess. Martius, who seems to have been a very fine fellow, disclaimed any pretensions to such laudations and modestly stated that he had, at the beginning of each fight, been far in the rear in your travelling-coach, with Marcia; that she had clung to him and so delayed his getting out; that each time he had gotten out and picked up the staff of a disabled combatant, but that, in each combat, he had arrived barely in time to land a few blows on some of the routed enemy; that in neither affray had he done any real fighting or been in any danger or performed any exploits.
"Commodus, in his blunt way, had asked whether he was good for anything, anyhow. Martius had replied that he was considered more than a mediocre horse-master.
"Commodus had then invited him to demonstrate his prowess in the Stadium of the Palace. There Martius had shown such skill, courage, agility, judgment, grace and ease that Commodus was delighted. He had Martius ride a number of wild, fierce and unmanageable horses and was more and more charmed with him.
"Next day he had another batch of intractable mounts for him. As Martius was manoeuvring one which he had almost subdued Commodus stepped too near the plunging brute and, in saving the Emperor from being run down and trampled, Martius was somehow thrown and his neck broken.
"Commodus was very penitent, felt that he had caused Martius' death, had him given a funeral of Imperial magnificence and, as soon as her grief had quieted enough, paid Marcia a ceremonial visit of condolence, as if she had been the widow of a full general killed in battle on the frontier.
"One sight of Marcia was enough. Within a very short space of time her wiles had ensnared him and Crispina raged in vain."