“What thinks Gyges, my sister?” slyly asked Gannon.
“He wishes only the living me,” laughed Psyche, modestly blushing.
“Besides,” added Alcmaeon, “no sculptor now lives who can create life in marble.”
“Are all our sculptors dead too?” asked Gannon.
“Art died under foreign oppression, my son. Artists now copy; they do not create,” replied his father.
But again the conversation reverted to Livilla. Hera and Psyche were filled with curiosity to know the smallest details about the first woman in Rome. The night was far spent when they had exhausted Gannon’s information. When the family separated for the night, Alcmaeon, with his heart full of love, took his handsome boy by the arms and said, “You are the picture of your grandfather.” This was the highest encomium he could bestow.
In the Praetorian Camp Gannon was working on a translation. He was all attention. His eyes would dance from the letter to the copy, and then he would write rapidly until a word puzzled him. After pausing a few moments, and biting his stylus or running his fingers through his short hair, he would once more write rapidly, softly breathing a happy song as he did so; for no noise was allowed in the office of Sejanus. The other secretaries were working near him. From time to time officers would pass through the room and hand out reports to be copied. While Gannon was thus occupied, he heard his name called in a commanding tone. He quickly answered the summons, and was bidden to carry a letter to Livilla.
Carrying messages was the easiest and pleasantest duty that Gannon had to perform. It was a rest to his eyes to see the streets filled with people. Especially did he enjoy a trip to the Palatine Hill; for at first he passed some of the palaces of the richest men on the Quirinal Hill, and caught delightful glimpses of wealth and power. He would walk through the Forum of Augustus, with its beautiful temple of Mars Ultor and its galleries filled with statues of the greatest Roman generals. He would pass through the Forum of Caesar, with its temple to Venus Genetrix, and then through the Forum Magnum, and, finally, up the Clivus Victoriae to the palace of Tiberius. Of late, carrying a letter to Livilla had become an embarrassing errand. Several times lately she had kept him waiting before her while she wrote her reply, and occasionally she would pause and look at him with such a fervent glance that Gannon would modestly lower his gaze.
Livia—or Livilla, as hereafter she shall be called, in order to distinguish her from Livia, the mother of Tiberius—was at this time in the bloom of her womanhood. She was the daughter of Drusus and Antonia. Drusus was the brother of Tiberius; Antonia, the daughter of Marc Antony and Octavia, the sister of Augustus. Therefore there flowed in the veins of Livilla the blood of both the Julian and Claudian families. She was a sister of Claudius and Germanicus. She had married Drusus, the son of Tiberius, and she made the emperor and her husband happy by giving birth first to a daughter, Julia, and then to male twins. In these boys centred the hopes of Tiberius for the continuation of the Claudian family as rulers of the empire.
The wife of Drusus was considered the most beautiful woman in Rome. Her face was purely Roman. She had large, black, dreamy eyes that shone through long lashes, a prominent but handsome nose, lips that were red and voluptuous, and a bold forehead, crowned with black and lustrous hair.