He had grown noticeably older since I had last seen him so close — older and richer and more powerful, his ambitions held in check only by the conflicting ambitions of men as shrewd and ruthless as himself. His hair was half-grey and his face was too stern to be handsome. His countenance displayed a perpetual discontent; he was a man who could never succeed enough for his own satisfaction. 'Crassus, Crassus, rich as Croesus,' went the popular ditty, comparing him to the miser of legend, but to me he was Sisyphus, forever rolling the boulder uphill, watching it tumble down and beginning again, achieving wealth and influence far beyond the measure of other men but never achieving enough to earn his rest. He had been vying for power with Pompey for years; with Caesar he seemed to be on excellent terms, at the moment at least.

'We've just come down from the Arx,' said Caesar, meaning the northern summit of the Capitoline Hill. Like the acropolis in Athens, the Arx was the high place chosen by Rome's founders on which to build their citadel and their most sacred temples. From the Arx a man can see all Rome below, and can in turn be seen unobstructed by the gods.

'We've been taking the auspices for today's convocation of the Senate. A pity that you weren't available to perform the augury, Rufus.'

'Today I perform a private augury,' said Rufus, indicating those of us behind him with the slightest tilt of his head. 'I take it that the auspices for the Senate were favourable, as you wished?'

"They were indeed,' said Caesar. The ironic smile seemed to say that the auspices could hardly have been otherwise. 'A hawk flew up from the west, and then dipped towards the north. The augur Festus assures us this presages a good day for the Senate to convene.'

'For myself' said Crassus dryly, 'I thought it more significant that a crow flew over the Senate House, cackling and complaining but going in circles, as if he were not going to have his way no matter how much he squawked. That crow reminded me of someone — could it be Cicero? But then I'm not privy to the secret knowledge of the augurs and am hardly qualified to make an interpretation.' His smile did little to soften his sarcasm.

Rufus ignored this veiled insult to his profession. 'Will things go well in the debate today?' he asked Caesar.

'Oh, yes,' Caesar said with a sigh. 'Cicero hasn't the votes to censure Catilina, and he certainly hasn't the support he needs to postpone the elections again. It's not what happens today, but what the voters will do tomorrow that's worrisome. We shall see. But what's this you're up to, a young man's coming of age?' He smiled and nodded amiably in our direction, but did not press for an introduction. 'Speaking of Cicero, if you're on your way up to the Arx, you'll pass both of our esteemed consuls on their way down.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'Cicero should be right behind us; he was eager enough to have the auspices done with so that he could convene the Senate. The debate will begin at any moment. You will miss the opening arguments, Rufus, and you as well, Marcus Mummius.'

'We'll come later,' said Rufus.

'It's likely to be brief. Cicero is just doing it for show; he’ll want to get it over with and make use of what's left of the day to harangue the crowd in the Forum — his last chance to sway the voters against Catilina. You should use the day to do some final campaigningyourself, Rufus. I intend to. I'm counting on you to serve with me as praetor next year.'

'Don't worry, after I've performed my augury I shall change into my candidate's toga at once!' Rufus laughed.

Caesar and Crassus began to move on. Our little party stepped aside to make way for their retinues. Crassus had not said a word to his estranged confederate Mummius, and apparently did not intend to. But he did look steadily at me as he stepped past, then paused as his eyes fell on Meto.

'Don't I know you, young man?' he said.

I looked at Meto and felt a pang of dread, remembering his nightmare. An uncertain emotion lit his eyes, but his face remained impassive. 'You knew me once, citizen,' he said. His voice was quiet but steady.

'Did I?' said Crassus, cocking his head and drawing up his shoulders. 'Yes, so I did, however scarcely. So you are a freedman now, Meto?'

'Yes.'

"The adopted son of Gordianus?'

I moved my lips to answer, but Meto answered first. 'I am.'

'How interesting. Yes, only recently a friend of mine happened to inform me of your circumstances.' Did he mean Catilina? Or could it have been his once-protege, Marcus Caelius? Whichever, I did not like the idea of my family being discussed behind my back. 'Odd, how this detail of your manumission and adoption had somehow escaped my attention all these years.'

'It hardly seems a matter worthy of concern to a man as eminent as yourself, citizen,' said Meto, returning Crassus's scrutiny with an unwavering gaze. I looked at Meto, slighdy awed. Not only had he said exactly what I would have said, but he had said it just as I would have tried to, with the very same, deliberately straightforward inflection, neither contemptuous nor servile. Sometimes we open our mouths and hear our parents speak; sometimes our children open their mouths and our own voices come out

'The last I knew of you, Meto, you were in Sicily, where I had arranged for you to be,' said Crassus, delicately avoiding the crass vocabulary of commerce and ownership. 'Just as I had arranged for that one to be off to Egypt,' he added, indicating Apollonius and casting a sharp glance at Mummius. 'What part did Marcus Mummius play in frustrating those delicate arrangements, I wonder? Never mind. Now I meet you in a toga, Meto, on your way up to the Arx to celebrate your citizenship.' His lips compressed into the thinnest of smiles. He narrowed his eyes and shifted them between me and Meto. 'The goddess Fortune has smiled on you, Meto. May she smile on you always,' he said in a hollow voice, and turned away, summoning his retinue after him.

Perhaps he meant it, for above and beyond the triumph of the individual will, a Roman respects and bows to the incomprehensible caprices of Fortune, and to a man like Crassus the salvation of a boy like Meto, in the face of all Crassus's efforts to the contrary, might very well seem a supernatural occurrence, evidence of the intervention of the gods and thus an occasion for respect and the humble expression of goodwill. Who knows, after all, when the goddess Fortune might turn her back even on the richest man in Rome?

The lengthy retinues passed. We pressed onward and upward, only to encounter another retinue. Coming down from the citadel, following Crassus and Caesar, was Cicero himself, together with his fellow consul, the notorious nonentity y Gaius Antonius. At the party, Rufus had said something in passing about Cicero wearing armour — 'that absurd breast-plate’ he had called it, and had then passed on to another subject without explaining. Now I saw what he had meant, for covering Cicero's chest and reflecting the harsh gleam of the afternoon sun was a burnished breastplate such as a general might wear in combat Cicero's consular toga was loosened at the neck and throat so that the boldly shaped pectorals of the hammered and filigreed metal were fully displayed. Around him hovered a bodyguard of armed men, surly-looking fellows who walked with their hands on the hilts of their sheathed daggers. It struck me that such a display was less worthy of a consul of the Republic than of a suspicious autocrat — even the dictator Sulla had gone about the Forum unarmed and unguarded, trusting the gods to protect him.

Before I could ask Rums to explain the breastplate and the heavy bodyguard, Cicero was upon us. In the middle of conversing with Antonius he caught sight of Rufus. His expression passed through rapid changes. He looked at first genuinely pleased, then grave and doubtful, then almost playfully shrewd — the face of a mentor who has lost the allegiance of a once-devoted pupil but does not despair of regaining it. 'Dear Rufus!' he said, smiling broadly.