"So the Roman governor of Egypt could have a stranglehold on the Empire?"

"And be in a position to set himself up as an independent king, with the wealth to hire all the troops he needs. Would you like to see Pompey in a position of such power? Or Crassus?"

"I understand. So this is why it's always been our policy to back one degenerate weakling after another for the crown of Egypt?"

"Exactly. And we always help them: with loans, with military aid, with advice. Not that they take advice very well. Caius Rabirius is working heroically to sort out Ptolemy's financial problems, but it could be years before he makes much progress." Rabirius was a famous Roman banker who had lent huge sums to Ptolemy, who in turn had named him minister of finance for Egypt.

"So who do we back this time?" I asked.

"It'll have to be the infant," he said, lowering his voice even further. "But no need to let that be known too soon." He favored me with a conspiratorial grin. "The other parties will court us lavishly as long as they think they have a chance to win Roman favor."

"The princesses are out of the question?" I said. I had yet to see these ladies. They were living at country estates at that season.

"The Senate has never favored the support of female rulers, and these are too surrounded by predatory relatives and courtiers. I suppose the brat will have to marry one of them, but that's for the benefit of his Egyptian subjects. As far as the Senate is concerned, he can marry one of the sacred crocodiles."

"That having been decided," I said, "just how do we occupy ourselves here?"

"Like all the other Romans here," he said. "We have a good time."

For two months I lived the wonderfully idle existence of a Roman official visiting Egypt. I made the inevitable journey to all the most famous sites: I saw the pyramids and the nearby colossal head that is supposed to have an equally huge lion's body beneath it. I saw the statue of Memnon that hails the rising sun with a musical note. I toured some very odd temples and met some very odd priests. Wherever I went, the royal officials went into transports of servility until I began to expect them to erect little shrines in my honor. Perhaps they did.

Once you are out of Alexandria you are in Egypt proper, the Egypt of the Pharaohs. This Egypt is a curious and unchanging place. In any of the nomes, you would see a spanking new temple erected by the Ptolemies to one of the ancient gods. A mile or two away you would see a virtually identical temple, except that it would be two thousand years old. The only difference would be the somewhat faded paint on the older temple.

At the great ceremonial center of Karnak there is a temple complex the size of a city, its great peristyle hall a forest of columns so massive and so tall that the mind wearies in its contemplation, and every square inch of it carved with that demented picture-writing the Egyptians delight in so. Over countless centuries the Pharaohs and priests of Egypt drove the populace to finance and build these absurd piles of rock, apparently without a murmur of protest in return. Who needs slaves when the peasants are so spiritless? Italians would have reduced the place to rubble before those pillars were head-high.

There can be no more agreeable way to travel than by barge upon the Nile. The water has none of the alarming instability of the sea, and the land is so narrow that you can see almost everything from the river itself. Walk a mile from the riverbank, and you are in the desert. And drifting downstream under a full moon is an experience out of a dream, the quiet broken only by the occasional bellow of a hippopotamus. On such nights the ancient temples and tombs gleam like jewels in the moonlight and it is easy to believe that you are seeing the world as the gods once saw it, when they walked among men.

It has been my experience that periods of ease and tranquility are invariably followed by times of chaos and danger, and my prolonged river idyll was no exception. My time of ease and idle pleasure changed as soon as I returned to Alexandria.

It was the beginning of winter in Egypt. And despite what many people say, there is a winter in Egypt. The wind grows cool and blustery, and on some days it even rains. My barge reached the delta and then took the canal that connected that marshy, rich country to Alexandria. It is wonderful to be in a country where one rarely has to walk for any great distance and there are no steep slopes to be negotiated.

I left the barge at one of the lake harbor docks and hired a litter to carry me to the Palace. This one was carried by a modest four bearers, but Alexandria is a beautiful city even at street level.

Our route took us by the Macedonian barracks, and I ordered a halt while I looked over the place. Unlike Rome, Alexandria had no ban on soldiers within the city. The Successors were always foreign despots, and they never thought it amiss to remind the natives of where power lay.

The barracks consisted of two rows of sprawling, three-story buildings facing each other across a parade ground. The buildings were predictably splendid, and the soldiers on parade went through their drill with commendable smartness, but their gear was old-fashioned to Roman eyes. Some wore the solid bronze cuirass now worn only by Roman officers, others the stiff shirt of layered linen, faced with bronze scales. The better-off Roman legionaries had gone over to the Gallic mail shirt generations before, and Marius had standardized it throughout the legions. Some of the Macedonians retained their long spears, although they had more than a century before discarded their old, stiff phalanx formation and had adopted an open order on the Roman model.

At one end of the field a troop of cavalry practiced its maneuvers. The Macedonians had found cavalry to be useful in the broad eastern lands that made up so much of the old Persian Empire they had conquered. We Romans had only a tiny cavalry force and usually hired horsemen when we felt the need.

At the other end of the field some engineers were erecting some sort of siege machine, a massive thing of ropes and timber. I had never seen such a device and ordered the bearers to take me nearer. Now, any foreigner would know better than to wander freely about a Roman camp or barracks, but I had become so accustomed to the unfailing toadying of the Egyptians that it did not occur to me that I might be intruding.

At our approach, a man who had been bawling at the engineers whirled and stalked toward us, the sunlight flashing from his polished greaves and cuirass. He carried a plumed helmet under one arm.

"What's your business here?" he demanded. I knew the breed: a long-service professional with slits for eyes and a lipless mouth. He looked like every centurion I ever detested. The arrow and spear gouges on his armor matched the scars on his face and arms, as if he had asked the armorer for a matching ensemble.

"I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, of the Roman diplomatic mission," I said, as haughtily as I could manage. "Your machine piqued my interest and I came for a closer look."

"That so?" he said. "Bugger off."

This was not going well. "See here," I protested, "I don't believe you appreciate the uniquely intimate relations between the Palace and the Roman mission."

"Bring old Flute-Face down here and we'll talk about it," the officer said. "Meantime, get away from my barracks and stay away!"

"You shall hear more of this," I promised. That is something one always says after being thoroughly intimidated. "Bear me to the Palace," I ordered grandly.

As we trotted thither, I fantasized punishments for the obdurate officer. He was perfectly within his rights to expel a foreign civilian, but that did not excuse him, in my estimation. After all, I was a Roman official, of a sort, and Egypt was a Roman possession, of a sort. But the man's insolence was quite driven from my mind by the news that greeted me when I reached the embassy.