To Gwyn Morgan, Ron Mellor, and Hal Drake

Rome brawled around Publius Quinctilius Varus. Half a dozen stalwart lectiarii bore his sedan chair through the streets towards Augustus’ house on the Palatine hill. The slaves wore matching red tunics. Their smooth, skillful broken step kept him from feeling the bumps in the cobblestoned roadway.

Varus could have lowered the sedan chair’s curtains. That would have given him privacy in the midst of untold tens of thousands. But he didn’t mind being seen, not today. Anyone could tell at a glance that he was someone important.

A wagon full of sacks of grain drawn by two plodding oxen blocked his path. The ungreased axles squealed and groaned. A man could die of old age stuck behind something like that.

His slaves weren’t about to put up with it. One of the pedisequi who accompanied the litter—a Roman aristocrat was too special to carry whatever he might need, but had underlings to do it for him—called out in Greek-accented Latin: “Make way, there! Make way for the litter of Publius Quinctilius Varus!”

In narrow, winding streets packed with people on foot, donkeys, carts, and other wagons, making way for anybody wasn’t easy. The gray-haired man driving the wagon didn’t even try. “To the crows with him, whoever he is,” he shouted back. His accent said he was a Samnite or Oscan by birth.

“ ‘Whoever he is’? How dare you, you—peasant, you!” The pedisequus knew no worse abuse. He was as furious as if he’d been insulted himself. The master was the sun; the slave was the moon, and shone his reflected light. Varus’ man went on, “I will have you know he was consul twenty years ago. Consul, I tell you! He is just returned to Rome after governing the province of Syria. And he is married to Augustus’ grand-niece. Gods help you, wretch, if he has to ask your name!”