But Varus meant what he’d said. Massilia wasn’t Rome—no other place came close, not even Alexandria—or Antioch or Athens. But it was a perfectly respectable provincial town. Greeks had settled the southern coast of Gaul somewhere not long after Rome was founded. And Gallia Narbonensis had been a Roman province much longer than the wilder lands farther north. True, Caesar’s soldiers had besieged and sacked Massilia a lifetime ago, when it made the mistake of backing Pompey. It had recovered since, though, and was prosperous again. The temple to Apollo near the center of town was particularly fine, dominating the view from the harbor.

“Who will you be, sir?” a dockside lounger asked Varus in Greek-accented Latin. “I can tell you’re somebody, and no mistake.”

“I am Publius Quinctilius Varus, the new governor of Germany, on my way from Rome to take my post there,” Varus answered grandly. He nodded to Aristocles, who flipped the lounger a coin. “Will you be good enough to let the local leaders know I have arrived?”

The man popped the coin into his mouth. Most people carried small change between their cheek and jaw. Varus had himself in his younger days. Aristocles handled mundanities like money now. “I sure will, your honor,” the Massiliote said, and hurried away.

If he took the silver and disappeared… Well, what could Varus do about it? Nothing much. But the fellow proved as good as his word.

Before long, both of the town’s duumvirs—its paired executives, as consuls were the paired executives in Rome as a whole—hurried to the harbor to greet their distinguished visitor. By their Latin, they were Italians, not Greeks. One was tall and lean, the other short and stocky. Varus forgot their names as soon as he heard them. The tall one sold olive oil all over Gaul; the stocky one sold wine—or maybe it was the other way around.

Each duumvir invited him to a feast that evening. By the way they glared at each other, the one whose house he didn’t choose would hate him forever after. So he said, “I’ll stay a couple of days before going north. Why don’t I have my slave toss a coin to see which of you I visit first?”