His valet met him, signalling anxiety; Octavian hated the slightest mark on tunic or toga, which made life hard for the man, perpetually busy with chalk and clear vinegar.
‘Yes, you can have the toga,’ he said absently, shed it, and walked out into an internal peristyle garden that had the finest fountain in Rome, of rearing horses with fish’s tails, Amphitryon riding a shell chariot. The painting was exquisite, so lifelike that the water god’s weedy hair glimmered and glowered greenish, his skin a network of tiny, silvery scales. The sculpture sat in the middle of a round pool whose pale green marble had cost Hortensius ten talents to buy from the new quarries at Carrara.
Through a pair of bronze doors bearing scenes of Lapiths and centaurs in bas relief, Octavian entered a hall that had his study to one side and the dining room to the other. Thence he passed into a huge atrium whose impluvium pool beneath the complu-vium in the roof shimmered mirrorlike from an overhead sun. And finally through another pair of bronze doors he came onto the loggia, a vast open-air balcony. Hortensius had liked the idea of an arbor as shelter from strong sun, and erected a series of struts over part of the area, then planted grapevines to train over them. With the years they had festooned the frame into a dappled haven, pendant at this season with dangling bunches of pale green beads.
Four men sat in big chairs around a low table, with a fifth chair vacant to complete the circle. Two jugs and a number of beakers sat on the table, of plain Arvernian pottery – no golden goblets or Alexandrian glass flagons for Octavian! The water jug was bigger than the wine one, which held a very light, sparkling white vintage from Alba Fucentia. No connoisseur of oenological bent would have sniffed contemptuously at this wine, for Octavian liked to serve the best of everything. What he disliked were extravagance and imported anythings. The produce of Italia, he was fond of telling those prepared to listen, was superlative, so why play the snob by flaunting wines from Chios, rugs from Miletus, wools dyed in Hierapolis, tapestries from Corduba?
Cat-footed, Octavian gave no warning of his advent, and stood in the doorway for a moment to observe them; his ‘council of elders’, as Maecenas called them, punning on the fact that Quintus Salvidienus, at thirty-one, was the oldest of the group. To these four men – and to them alone – did Octavian voice his thoughts; though not all his thoughts. That privilege was reserved for Agrippa, his coeval and spiritual brother.
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, aged twenty-two, was everything a Roman nobleman ought to be in looks. He was as tall as Caesar had been, heavily muscled in a lean way, and possessed of an unusual yet handsome face whose brows beetled below a shelf of forehead and whose strong chin was tucked firmly beneath a stern mouth. Discovering that his deep-set eyes were hazel was difficult thanks to the bristling brows obscuring them. Yet Agrippa’s birth was so low that a Tiberius Claudius Nero sneered – who had ever heard of a family named Vipsanius? Samnite, if not Apulian or Calabrian. Italian scum at any rate. Only Octavian fully appreciated the depth and breadth of his intellect, which ran to the generaling of armies, the building of bridges and aqueducts, the invention of gadgets and tools to make labor easier. This year he was Rome’s urban praetor, responsible for all civil law suits and the apportioning of criminal cases to the various courts. A heavy job, but not heavy enough to satisfy Agrippa, who had also taken on some of the duties of the aediles. These worthies were supposed to care for Rome’s buildings and services; apostrophizing them as a scabby lot of idlers, he had assumed authority over the water supply and sewerage, much to the dismay of the companies that the city contracted to run them. He talked seriously of doing things to prevent the sewers backing up whenever the Tiber flooded, but feared it would not happen this year, as it necessitated a thorough mapping of many miles of sewers and drains. However, he had managed to get some action on the Aqua Marcia, the best of Rome’s existing aqueducts, and was constructing a new one, the Aqua Julia. Rome’s water supply was the best in the world, but the city’s population was increasing and time was running out.
He was Octavian’s man to the death, not blindly loyal but insight-fully so; he knew Octavian’s weaknesses as well as his strengths, and suffered for him as Octavian never suffered for himself. There could be no question of ambition. Unlike almost all New Men, Agrippa truly understood to the core of his being that it was Octavian, with the birth, who must retain ascendancy. His was the role of fides Achates, and he would always be there for Octavian … who would elevate him far beyond his true social status: what better fate than to be the Second Man in Rome? For Agrippa, that was more than any New Man deserved.
Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, aged thirty, was an Etruscan of the oldest blood; his family were the lords of Arretium, a busy river port on the bend of the Arnus where the Annian, Cassian and Clodian roads met as they traveled from Rome to Italian Gaul. For reasons best known to himself, he had dropped his family name, Cilnius, and called himself plain Gaius Maecenas. His love of the finer things in life showed in his softly plump physique, though he could, when push came to shove, undertake grueling journeys on Octavian’s behalf. The face was a trifle froglike, for his pale blue eyes had a tendency to pop out – exophthalmia, the Greeks called it.
A famous wit and raconteur, he had a mind as broad and deep as Agrippa’s, but in a different way; Maecenas loved literature, art, philosophy, rhetoric, and collected not antique pots but new poets. As Agrippa jokingly observed, he couldn’t general a bun fight in a brothel, but he did know how to stop one. A smoother, more persuasive talker than Maecenas no one had yet found, nor a man more suited for scheming and plotting in the shadows behind the curule chair. Like Agrippa, he had reconciled himself to Octavian’s ascendancy, though his motives were not as pure as Agrippa’s. Maecenas was a grey eminence, a diplomat, a dealer in men’s fates. He could spot a useful flaw in a trice and insert his sweet words painlessly into the weakness to produce a wound worse than any dagger could make. Dangerous, was Maecenas.
Quintus Salvidienus was a man from Picenum, that nest of demagogues and political nuisances that had bred such luminaries as Pompey the Great and Titus Labienus. But he hadn’t won his laurels in the Forum Romanum; his were earned on the battlefield, where he excelled. Fine-looking in the face and body, he had a thatch of bright red hair that had given him his cognomen, Rufus, and shrewd, far-sighted blue eyes. Inside himself he cherished high ambitions, and had tied his career to the tail of Octavian’s comet as the quickest way to the top. From time to time the Picentine vice stirred in him, which was to contemplate changing sides if it seemed prudent to do so. Salvidienus had no intention of ending on a losing side, and wondered sometimes if Octavian really had what it took to win the coming struggle. Of gratitude he had little, of loyalty none, but he had hidden these so successfully that Octavian, for one, did not dream that they existed in him. His guard was good, but there were occasions when he wondered if Agrippa suspected, so, whenever Agrippa was present, he watched what he said and did closely. As for Maecenas – who knew what that oily aristocrat sensed?
Titus Statilius Taurus, aged twenty-seven, was the least man among them, and therefore knew the least about Octavian’s ideas and plans. Another military man, he looked what he was, being tall, solidly built and rather beaten around the face – a swollen left ear, scarred left brow and cheek, broken nose. Yet he was, withal, a handsome man with wheat-colored hair, grey eyes, and an easy smile that belied his reputation as a martinet when he commanded legions. He had a horror of homosexuality and would not have anyone so inclined under his authority, no matter how well born. As a soldier he was inferior to Agrippa and Salvidienus, but not by much; what he lacked was their genius for improvisation. Of his loyalty there was no doubt, chiefly because Octavian dazzled him; the undeniable talents and brilliance of Agrippa, Salvidienus and Maecenas were as nothing compared to the extraordinary mind of Caesar’s heir.
‘Greetings,’ said Octavian, going to the vacant chair.
Agrippa smiled. ‘Where have you been? Making eyes at Lady Roma? Forum or Mons Aventinus?’
‘Forum.’ Octavian poured water and drank it thirstily, then sighed. ‘I was planning what to do when I have the money to set Lady Roma to rights.’
‘Planning is all it can be,’ said Maecenas wryly.
‘True. Still, Gaius, nothing is wasted. What plans I make