“Well, isn’t that better than risking your neck trying to make and unmake emperors?” Narcissus asked.

“I risk my neck each hour I linger in Rome!”

“Well then, by Hercules, take payment for the risk, and cut the risk and vanish!” exclaimed Narcissus.  “Help yourself once and for all to a bag full of gold in exchange for your father’s estates that were confiscated when they cut his head off.  Then leave Italy, and let us be outlaws in Sardinia.”

Sextus laughed.

“That probably sounds glorious to one in your position.  I, too, rather enjoyed the prospect when I first made my escape from Antioch and discovered how easy the life was.  But though I owe it to my father’s memory to win back his estates, even that, and present outlawry is small compared to the zeal I have for restoring Rome’s ancient liberties.  But I don’t deceive myself; I am not the man who can accomplish that; I can only help the one who can, and will.  That one is Pertinax.  He will reverse the process that has been going on since Julius Caesar overthrew the old republic.  He will use a Caesar’s power to destroy the edifice of Caesar and rebuild what Caesar wrecked!”

Narcissus pondered that, his head between his hands.

“I haven’t Rome at heart,” he said at last.  “Why should I have?  There are girls, whom I have forgotten, whom I loved more than I love Rome.  I am a slave gladiator.  I have been applauded by the crowds, but know what that means, having seen other men go the same route.  I am an emperor’s favorite, and I know what that means too; I saw Cleander die; I have seen man after man, and woman after woman lose his favor suddenly.  Banishment, death, the ergastulum, torture—­and, what is much worse, the insults the brute heaps on any one he turns against—­I am too wise to give that—­” he spat on the flag-stones—­“for the friendship of Commodus.  And Commodus is Rome; you can’t persuade me he isn’t.  Rome turns on its favorites as he does—­scorns them, insults them, throws them on dung-heaps.  That for Rome!” He spat again.  “They even break the noses off the statues of the men they used to idolize!  They even throw the statues on a dung-heap to insult the dead!  Why should I set Rome above my own convenience?”

“Well, for instance, you could almost certainly buy your freedom by betraying me,” said Sextus.  “Why don’t you?”

“Jupiter!  How shall a man answer that?  I suppose I don’t betray you because if I did I should loathe myself.  And I prefer to like myself, which I contrive to do at intervals.  Also, I enjoy the company of honest men, and I think you are honest, although I think you are also an idealist—­which, I take it, is the same thing as a born fool, or so I have begun to think, since I attend on the emperor and have to hear so much talk of philosophy.  Look you what philosophy has made of Commodus!  Didn’t Marcus Aurelius beget him from his own