They had riches, the energetic men of their houses gaining, long since, lands and honours and wealth. Slaves there were by the score and the hundred to take from them effort in behalf even of their own persons. They might make it if they chose, putting aside the offices of slaves. But it took virtue and hardness to make that effort, and from childhood they had had no training. One in blood and bone and force with their men, they might not be soldier, nor administrator, nor statesman, nor public official, nor trader, nor teacher, nor physician, nor orator, nor athlete, nor student in the schools. Where there were children there were slave nurses, slave tutors. The huge household, the “familia,” was largely managed by skilled slaves. Everywhere initiative, restless energy, came hard against the inner wall of law and the outer wall of custom, and they were walls to keep in prisoners! High and thick though they were, this age saw some breaking through toward freedom from that grasp of law, that backward clutch from equal standing in human rights. But the breaking through seemed futile because it went not all the way, went but the smallest portion of the way, and so could come into but weak relations with the whole.
But there was one road upon which initiative was not blocked. The patrician woman with youth, with fair youth, with beauty, with some beauty, with wit to make store gain more store, and sensual to match sensual men, might have power, power, power—illegitimate, indirect, useless and selfish power! The time was one of libertinism, and there were libertines, men and women, and they seemed to sit in the chairs of the Fates and to spin and cut the threads of destiny.
Valeria saw that Livia looked at her full, then with a laugh looked away. The man that was Livia’s lover was that one who desired Valerian’s command. And now Livia was placed near to Cæsar and had snared him with her thick eyelashes and the ivory tower of her throat. She saw Lucilla speaking to the man beside her, and he was that senator who most coveted Valerian’s land. She saw how many of Valerian’s foes were here, and that Cæsar looked blackly upon him. She thought that he had been commanded here in order that there might be snatched and perverted some word that he might drop.... She felt a depth of anger and despair.
Guests were yet entering. Now a movement showed beyond Cæsar a white-robed, honour-heaped figure—the figure of a priestess of Vesta, bidden to this feast....
Valeria felt a shock of delight, a glow from head to foot. Her hand touched Valerian’s. “Look! It is Flavia!”
“I see.... Show no love for anything here to-night save for Cæsar and those whom he loves.”
As best she might she obeyed. Every down-drifting rose-leaf, every throb of music touched her senses like a cry of danger. She had seen in a forest doe or hare quiver when twig rubbed against twig.... But the vestal her daughter, seeing her, gave an exclamation. “My mother and father—I did not know that they would be here!” She smiled upon them, down the long board—several noted it.... Flavia was brightly fair, and she loved lights and music and flowers and all these people. Cæsar sent her wine from his own flagon.
On, with a kind of ordered tumult, went the feast. To Valerian, aware of Damocles’ sword above him, to Valeria sharing that awareness, it was long—long!
Then came in a dancer. The clearing of a space for her alone, the fanfare of trumpets that brought her in, seemed to betoken her famed in her art. She came, beautiful, with brown, waving locks, half nude, dancing wonderfully. She was Iras the Greek, daughter of Lais the flower-seller.
Cæsar’s guests applauded her dancing. She came on twinkling feet to one and to the other. She carried a thyrsus tipped with a pine cone, wound with leaves and blossoms. This she dipped into fountain spray as she passed, then shook it above this one and that one, showering him with diamonds. This man and that man, drunken, turning, strove to clasp her by arm or waist, but she danced away from him, shaking the thyrsus, shaking her brown locks. She spoke familiarly to any she chose, moving from point to point as lightly as thistledown.