Chapter 2

Cornelia Vipsania Gallio, who always slightly accented her middle name—though she was only a stepdaughter to the divorced spouse of Emperor Tiberius—might have been socially important had she made the necessary effort.

If mere wishing on Cornelia’s part could have induced her husband to ingratiate himself with the Crown, Marcus Lucan Gallio could have belonged to the inner circle, and any favor he desired for himself or his family might have been granted; or if Cornelia herself had gone to the bother of fawning upon the insufferable old Julia, the Gallio household might have reached that happy elevation by this shorter route. But Cornelia lacked the necessary energy.

She was an exquisite creature, even in her middle forties; a person of considerable culture, a gracious hostess, an affectionate wife, an indulgent mother, and probably the laziest woman in the whole Roman Empire. It was said that sometimes slaves would serve the Gallio establishment for months before discovering that their mistress was not an invalid.

Cornelia had her breakfast in bed at noon, lounged in her rooms or in the sunny garden all afternoon, drowsed over the classics, apathetically swept her slim fingers across the strings of her pandura; and was waited on, hand and foot, by everybody in the house. And everybody loved her, too, for she was kind and easy to please. Moreover, she never gave orders—except for her personal comfort. The slaves—under the competent and loyal supervision of Marcipor; and the diligent, if somewhat surly, dictatorship of Decimus in the culinary department—managed the institution unaided by her counsel and untroubled by her criticism. She was by nature an optimist, possibly because fretting was laborious. On rare occasions, she was briefly baffled by unhappy events, and at such times she wept quietly—and recovered.

Yesterday, however, something had seriously disturbed her habitual tranquillity. The Senator had made a speech. Paula Gallus, calling in the late afternoon, had told her. Paula had been considerably upset.

Cornelia was not surprised by the report that her famous husband was pessimistic in regard to the current administration of Roman government, for he was accustomed to walking the floor of her bedchamber while delivering opinions of this nature; but she was shocked to learn that Marcus had given the Senate the full benefit of his accumulated dissatisfactions. Cornelia had no need to ask Paula why she was so concerned. Paula didn’t want Senator Gallio to get himself into trouble with the Crown. In the first place, it would be awkward for Diana to continue her close friendship with Lucia if the latter’s eminent parent persisted in baiting Prince Gaius. And, too, was there not a long-standing conspiracy between Paula and Cornelia to encourage an alliance of their houses whenever Diana and Marcellus should become romantically aware of each other?

Paula had not hinted at these considerations when informing Cornelia that the Senator was cutting an impressive figure on some pretty thin ice, but she had gone so far as to remind her long-time friend that Prince Gaius—while notably unskillful at everything else—was amazingly resourceful and ingenious when it came to devising reprisals for his critics.