'You can't help but admire the fellow,' said Cicero, after he had paced around the room three or four times. 'Here am I, about to become the pre-eminent man in Rome, while he hasn't even made it to praetor yet. But I am the one who must dance attendance on him!'

After a while I became aware that we were being watched from behind a door by a solemn-faced girl of about ten who must have been Caesar's daughter, Julia. I smiled at her and she darted away. A little while later, Caesar's mother, Aurelia, emerged from the same room. Her narrow, dark-eyed, watchful face, like Caesar's, had something of the bird of prey about it, and she exuded a similar air of chilly cordiality. Cicero had been acquainted with her for many years. All three of her brothers, the Cottas, had been consul, and if Aurelia had been born a man, she would certainly have achieved the rank herself, for she was shrewder and braver than any of them. As it was, she had to content herself with furthering the career of her son, and when her eldest brother died she fixed it so that Caesar would take his place as one of the fifteen members of the College of Priests – a brilliant move, as I shall soon describe.

'Forgive him, Cicero, for his rudeness,' she said. 'I've reminded him you're here, but you know how he is.' There was a footstep and we glanced behind us to see a woman in the passage leading to the door. No doubt she had hoped to slip past unnoticed, but one of her shoes must have come undone. Leaning against the wall to refasten it, her auburn hair awry, she glanced guiltily in our direction, and I do not know who was the more embarrassed: Postumia – which was the woman's name – or Cicero, for he knew her very well as the wife of his great friend the jurist and senator Servius Sulpicius. Indeed, she was due to have dinner with Cicero that very evening.

He quickly turned his attention back to the bronze of Venus and pretended to be in the middle of a conversation – 'This is very fine: is it a Myron?' – and did not look up until she had gone.