“As I said,” remarked Sextus, “if Pertinax comes—­”

“He will show us how foolish a soldier can be in the arms of a woman,” Norbanus remarked, laughing again, glad the long silence was broken.

“Orcus (the messenger of Dis, who carried dead souls to the underworld.  The masked slaves who dragged dead gladiators out of the arena were disguised to represent Orcus) take his women!  What I was going to say was, we shall learn from him the real news from Rome.”

“All the names of the popular dancers!”

“And if Galen is there we shall learn—­”

“About Commodus’ health.  That is more to the point.  Now if we could get into Galen’s chest of medicines and substitute—­”

“Galen is an honest doctor,” Sextus interrupted.  “If Galen is there we will find out what the philosophers are discussing in Rome when spies aren’t listening.  Pertinax dresses himself like a strutting peacock and pretends that women and money are his only interests, but what the wise ones said yesterday, Pertinax does today; and what they say today, he will do tomorrow.  He can look more like a popinjay and act more like a man than any one in Rome.”

“Who cares how they behave in Rome?  The city has gone mad,” Norbanus answered.  “Nowadays the best a man can do is to preserve his own goods and his own health.  Ride to a conference do we?  Well, nothing but words will come of it, and words are dangerous.  I like my danger tangible and in the open where it can be faced.  Three times last week I was approached by Glyco—­you remember him?—­that son of Cocles and the Jewess—­asking me to join a secret mystery of which he claims to be the unextinguishable lamp.  But there are too many mysteries and not enough plain dealing.  The only mystery about Glyco is how he avoids indictment for conspiracy—­what with his long nose and sly eyes, and his way of hinting that he knows enough to turn the world upside down.  If Pertinax talks mystery I will class him with the other foxes who slink into holes when the agenda look like becoming acta.  Show me only a raised standard in an open field and I will take my chance beside it.  But I sicken of all this talk of what we might do if only somebody had the courage to stick a dagger into Commodus.”

“The men who could persuade themselves to do that, are persuaded that a worse brute might succeed him,” Sextus answered.  “It is no use killing a Commodus to find a Nero in his shoes.  If the successor were in sight —­and visibly a man not a monster—­there are plenty of men brave enough to give the dagger-thrust.  But the praetorian guard, that makes and unmakes emperors, has been tasting the sweets of tyranny ever since Marcus Aurelius died.  They despise their ‘Roman Hercules’ (Commodus’ favorite name for himself)—­who doesn’t?  But they grow fat and enjoy themselves under his tyranny, so they would never consent to leaving him unguarded, as happened to Nero, for instance, or to replacing him with any one of the caliber of Aurelius, if such a man could be found.”