After a pause Longa Duilia said, as she signed to Lucilla the slave to fan her, “That was the one defect in your dear father’s character, he had no Push.”
“Mother! can you say that after his splendid victories, over the Chauci, over the Parthians, over——”
“I know all about them. They should have served as means, child, not as ends.”
“I do not understand.”
“Poor simple man, he fought the enemies of Rome and defeated them, because it was, as he said, his duty to his country, to Rome, to do so. But, by Ops and Portumna! that was talking like a child. What might he not have been with those victories? But he couldn’t see it. He had it not in him. Some men are born to squint; some have club feet; and your poor dear father had no ambition.”
After a pause the lady added: “When I come to consider what he might have done for me, had he possessed Push, it makes my spleen swell. Just consider! What is Galba compared with him? What any of these fellows who have been popping up their heads like carp or trout when the May flies are about? My dear, had your dear father been as complete a man as I am a woman, at this moment I might be Empress.”
“That would have contented you.”
“It would have been a step in that direction.”
“What more could you desire?”
“Why, to be a goddess. Did not the Senate pronounce Poppæa divine, and to be worshipped and invoked, after Nero had kicked her and she died? And that baby of his—it died of fits in teething—that became a goddess also. Nasty little thing! I saw it, it did nothing but dribble and squall, but is a god for all that. My dear Domitia, think! the Divine Duilia! Salus Italiæ, with my temples, my altars, my statues. By the Immortal Twelve, I think I should have tried to cut out Aphrodite, and have been represented rising from the foam. Oh! it would have been too, too lovely. But there! it makes me mad—all that might have been, and would have been to a certainty, had your dear father listened to me at Antioch. But he had a head.” She touched her brow. “Something wrong there—no Push.”