'In Rome?'

He laughed, remembering. 'On the Palatine Hill, outside my house. Sometimes alone, sometimes with another. We would take a long walk around the block, naked and steaming, letting the wind dry us. It's delicious, isn't it? Rome is full of naked statues which offend no one's dignity; why should a naked man? You might think it would have caused a scandal, but it didn't. Would you believe that no one ever complained?'

'Had you not been so good-looking, they might have,' I said.

'You compliment me, Gordianus.' We had reached the top of the ridge. Catilina dropped the towels and stepped atop one of the tree stumps to take in the view. I looked up at his heaving chest and the muscular arms crossed over it, his flat belly, his sturdy legs and the pendulous sex between.

'You are resplendent in your nakedness, Catilina!' I said, kughing and trying to catch my breath. I gazed at him openly, and not without envy. 'Truly, like a statue on a pedestal.' I felt a little drunk, not on wine any longer but on moonlight and the peculiar novelty of being naked out of doors. The wind had dried the steam from my body, but I was covered with a fresh sheen of sweat from the exertion of the climb.

'Do you think so? My lovers have said the same thing.' He looked down at himself) as if his body were familiar but separate from him, just another of the things he owned, like a finely crafted chair or a beautiful painting. 'Impressive for a man of forty-five, I suppose.' He complimented himself without irony or false modesty, but with the matter-of-factness of a man who has inhabited a body for a long time and is neither unduly impressed nor takes it for granted.

Below us the valley slumbered. I saw no lights from the distant houses of the Claudii, and from my own house only a single lamp was visible, set outside the front door by one of the slaves who must have seen us leave the atrium. Yet how could the world sleep, when the moon was so bright? The Cassian Way was a ribbon of purest alabaster skirting the base of the mountain. The roof of the house seemed to be made of tiles that glowed with a pale blue light. And when the zephyr sighed through the olive orchard below us, the rustling leaves shimmered black and silver. An owl hooted from a nearby tree.

Catilina sighed. 'I have never stinted myself of the pleasures that my body could take, nor stinted others of the pleasures it could give. Such a simple principle by which to live, don't you think? Yet even that has been turned against me by my enemies, twisted into something ugly and depraved. You were in the city during the final days of the campaign. You must have heard how they vilified me. The same as last year, but worse. Last year Cicero and his scheming brother Quintus tasted my blood; this year nothing would satisfy them but to tear out my heart and eat it.'

Catilina drew himself up and gazed down at the valley. When I had said he looked like a statue on a pedestal, I had meant it half in jest, but half in earnest. In his marmoreal nakedness, wearing a stern face, he might have been the image of a god. Not the gods of boyhood, Mercury or Apollo; Vulcan perhaps, or more likely Jupiter, master of order and shaper of the greater destinies, gazing firmly down from Olympus.

'If you had a beard, you'd look like Jupiter,' I said.

The thought amused him. He thrust his right arm stiffly before him, palm down, and spread his fingers. 'If only I could cast lightning bolts, like Jupiter.' He gazed at the back of his hand. 'Cicero can — did you know that? Lightning bolts emanate from his fingers. A kind of lightning, anyway. He points at the mob in the Forum; sparks gather at his fingertips and flash into blue flame. He shoots shafts of lightning straight into their eyes and ears, blinding them to the truth, taming them deaf to reason.' Catilina thrust out his arm again and pointed down with his forefinger, miming the action. 'Cicero's forefinger: the Vestal Virgins must be protected from Catilina! Crack! The lightning strikes, the voters quiver with superstitious awe and revulsion. His middle finger: Catilina seduces young men! The lightning flashes, the voters grimace with distaste — and perhaps a little jealousy? His next finger: Catilina pimps for rich matrons! The voters howl in disgust. His little finger, in the name of serving Sulla, Catilina murdered good citizens and raped their wives and children! The voters tremble with loathing. And on his other hand — well, with his other hand, he's busy masturbating, isn't he?'

I laughed out loud. Catilina grunted and began to laugh as well, a rich, good-natured laugh, I thought at first, until a taint of bitterness seemed to swallow it up before it had run its course.

'He has destroyed me with lies and distortions, and the mob acclaims him as the First Citizen in the land. Still, I had rather be Catilina than Cicero,' he said, studying his hand for a moment and then dropping his arm to his side. 'What about you, Gordianus?'

'What, had I rather be myself than Cicero?'

'No! Which would you choose to be: Cicero or Catilina?'

'An odd question.'

'An excellent question.'

'You're forever playing games, Catilina.'

'And you are forever avoiding them. Do you fear the element of chance? Must you always know the outcome ahead of time? Then choose to be Cicero!' He gazed down at me. Pockets of shadow obscured his eyes, but his lips had a quizzical twist. 'Do you know what I think? I think it would frighten you to be Catilina.' He jumped down from the stump. He picked up a broad towel, spread it on the ground and lay down on it, joining his hands beneath his head and gazing up at the moon.

'Lie down beside me, Gordianus.'

I hesitated.

'Come, join me. Gaze up at the face of the moon. You call your daughter Diana, don't you, after the goddess of the moon? Look up at her face with me.'

I lay down beside him, acutely aware again of my nakedness as I was bathed in bright moonlight 'Diana is short for Gordiana,' I explained.

‘Vaguely impious, even so, to call a child by a goddess's name,' said Catilina. ‘But fitting, I suppose. Diana, patron goddess of the plebeians, who inspired the Sabine women in their revolt. Diana, goddess of fertility and birth, dweller in mountains and woods, lover of all wild things. One tends to forget her in the city, just as one forgets the moon there amid so many lamps. She's stronger here. Her light bathes all the world with its glow. Lie here and worship her with me for a while.'

We lay in silence. Except for the occasional rustling of leaves and the hooting of the owl, the world was so quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat and Catilina's breathing beside me. After a while he said, 'May I speak with you frankly?'

I smiled. 'I doubt that I could stop you.'

'We seem to share the same taste in women, Gordianus. Your wife Bethesda is quite spectacular; she reminds me more than a little of my own Aurelia. Their beauty is much alike, as is their haughtiness, their mysteriousness. But it seems that we do not share the same taste in young men.'

'Apparently not.'

'Yet I can't imagine how anyone could fail to find Tongilius beautiful, even Cicero. His green eyes, the way his hair sweeps back from his forehead—'

'Tongilius is beautiful,' I acknowledged.

'Yet you do not desire him?'

'That would hardly be proper, would it, since I am your host and Tongilius is your companion?'

'Now who plays games with words, Gordianus? My point is this: if you have an eye for beauty, why do you not act on it? How can you resist?'

I laughed softly. 'First of all, Catilina, like many unusually good-looking men and women who encounter constant temptation, you seem to think such opportunities are as rampant for others as for yourself'

'Do you really underestimate yourself so ludicrously, Gordianus? Tongilius, for one, finds you quite attractive. He tells me so.'