“He really is a crackpot, isn’t he?” said Scipio languidly, and lay back on his couch with his hands behind his head, smiling at the painted ceiling.

“Is that your only answer?” said Cicero.

“No,” said Scipio, “this is my only answer. Lepida!” And at that, a demure young woman appeared from behind a screen, where she had obviously been listening, and moved gracefully across the floor to stand beside the couch. She slipped her hand into his. “This is my wife. We were married yesterday evening. What you see around you are the wedding gifts of our friends. Pompey the Great came directly from sacrificing on the Capitol to be a witness.”

“Jupiter himself could have been a witness,” retorted Cicero, “but that would not suffice to make the ceremony legal.” Still, I could see by the way his shoulders slumped slightly that the fight had gone out of him. Possession, as the jurists say, is nine-tenths of the law, and Scipio not merely had the possession, but obviously the eager acquiescence, of his new bride. “Well,” Cicero said, looking around at the wedding presents, “on my behalf, I suppose, if not that of my client, I offer you congratulations. Perhaps my wedding gift to you should be to persuade Cato to recognize reality.”

“That,” said Scipio, “would be the rarest gift ever bestowed.”

“My cousin is a good man at heart,” said Lepida. “Will you convey my best wishes, and my hopes that one day we shall be reconciled?”

“Of course,” said Cicero with a gentlemanly bow, and he was just turning to go when he stopped abruptly. “Now that is a pretty piece. That is a very pretty piece.”

It was a bronze statue of a naked Apollo, perhaps half the size of a man, playing on a lyre-a sublime depiction of graceful masculinity, arrested in mid-dance, with every hair of his head and string of his instrument perfectly delineated. Worked into his thigh in tiny silver letters was the name of the sculptor: Myron.

“Oh, that,” said Scipio, very offhand, “that was apparently given to some temple by my illustrious ancestor, Scipio Africanus. Why? Do you know it?”

“If I am not mistaken, it is from the shrine of Aesculapius at Agrigentum.”

“That is the place,” said Scipio. “In Sicily. Verres got it off the priests there and gave it to me last night.”

IN THIS WAY Cicero learned that Gaius Verres had returned to Rome and was already spreading the tentacles of his corruption across the city. “Villain!” exclaimed Cicero as he walked away down the hill. He clenched and unclenched his fists in impotent fury. “Villain, villain, villain !” It was fair to assume that if Verres had given a Myron to young Scipio, then Hortensius, the Metellus brothers, and all his other prominent allies in the Senate would have received even heftier bribes-and it was precisely from among such men that the jury at any future trial would be drawn. A secondary blow was the discovery that Pompey had been present at Scipio’s wedding feast along with Verres and the leading aristocrats. Pompey had always had strong links with Sicily-as a young general he had restored order on the island, and had even stayed overnight in the house of Sthenius. Cicero had looked to him, if not exactly for support-he had learned his lesson there-then at least for benign neutrality. But Cicero saw the awful possibility that if he went ahead with the prosecution he might have every powerful faction in Rome united against him.

But there was no time to ponder the implications of that now. Cato had insisted on hearing the results of Cicero’s interview immediately and was waiting for him at the house of his half sister, Servilia, which was also on the Via Sacra, only a few doors down from Scipio’s residence. As we entered, three young girls-none, I would guess, more than five years old-came running out into the atrium, followed by their mother. This was the first occasion, I believe, on which Cicero met Servilia, who was later to become the most formidable of Rome’s many formidable women. She was nearly thirty, about five years older than Cato, handsome but not at all pretty. By her late first husband, Marcus Brutus, she had given birth to a son when she was still only fifteen; by her second, the feeble Junius Silanus, she had produced these three daughters in quick succession. Cicero greeted them as if he had not a care in the world, squatting on his haunches to talk to them while Servilia looked on. She insisted that they meet every caller, and so become familiar with adult ways, for they were her great hope for the future, and she wished them to be sophisticated.

A nurse came and took the girls away, and Servilia showed us through to the tablinum. Here Cato was waiting with Antipater the Tyrian, a Stoic philosopher who seldom left his side. Cato took the news of Lepida’s marriage as badly as one would have predicted, stamping around and swearing, which reminds me of another of Cicero’s witticisms-that Cato was always the perfect Stoic, as long as nothing went wrong.

“Do calm yourself, Cato,” said Servilia after a while. “It is perfectly obvious the matter is finished, and you might as well get used to it. You did not love her-you do not know what love is. You do not need her money-you have plenty of your own. She is a drippy little thing. You can find a hundred better.”

“She asked me to bring you her best wishes,” said Cicero, which provoked another outpouring of abuse from Cato.

“I shall not put up with it!” he shouted.

“Yes you will,” said Servilia. She pointed at Antipater, who quailed. “You tell him, philosopher. My brother thinks his fine principles are all the product of his intellect, when they are simply girlish emotions tricked out by false philosophers as manly points of honor.” And then, to Cicero again: “If he had had more experience of the female sex, Senator, he would see how foolish he is being. But you have never even lain with a woman, have you, Cato?”

Cicero looked embarrassed, for he always had the equestrian class’s slight prudishness about sexual matters and was unused to the free ways of the aristocrats.

“I believe it weakens the male essence and dulls the power of thought,” said Cato sulkily, producing such a shriek of laughter from his sister that his face turned as red as Pompey’s had been painted the previous day, and he stamped out of the room, trailing his Stoic after him.

“I apologize,” said Servilia, turning to Cicero. “Sometimes I almost think he is slow-witted. But then, when he does get hold of a thing, he will never let go of it, which is a quality of sorts, I suppose. He praised your speech to the tribunes about Verres. He made you sound a very dangerous fellow. I rather like dangerous fellows. We should meet again.” She held out her hand to bid Cicero good-bye. He took it, and it seemed to me that she held it rather longer than politeness dictated. “Would you be willing to take advice from a woman?”

“From you,” said Cicero, eventually retrieving his hand, “of course.”

“My other brother, Caepio-my full brother, that is-is betrothed to the daughter of Hortensius. He told me that Hortensius was speaking of you the other day-that he suspects you plan to prosecute Verres, and has some scheme in mind to frustrate you. I know no more than that.”

“And in the unlikely event that I was planning such a prosecution,” said Cicero, with a smile, “what would be your advice?”

“That is simple,” replied Servilia, with the utmost seriousness. “Drop it.”