Varus sat upright at his father's side in the Tribunal-the patron's box-over the right edge of the stage in the Pompeian Theater, jotting notes in the waxed memorandum book on in his lap. Staring at him from the vast bowl of the theater was an audience of thousands: perhaps twenty thousand all told, including the slaves standing-they weren't allowed to sit-in the aisles and the surrounding colonnades.

It was disquieting to look out at many human faces, though he knew that only a handful of them were even vaguely aware of Gaius Alphenus Varus. Indeed, very few of the spectators would pay any attention to his father, Gaius Alphenus Saxa: Senator of Carce, Replacement Consul, and destined governor of the province of Lusitania on the Atlantic Coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

The spectators didn't worry Varus as much, though, as the vision forming in his mind: a very old woman, seated on a throne. He wasn't sure if she really existed or if she ever had existed; but he knew why he was seeing her.

Varus was too well schooled in philosophy to lie, even to himself, about his father's personality. Saxa was a cultured and well-read man, but not a particularly wise one. He had chosen to commemorate his consulate by putting on a mime written for the occasion: The Conquest of Lusitania by Hercules.

The Replacement Consul sat on his gilded, high-backed chair, beaming with pleasure. If the Emperor had been present, the Golden Seat would have been his. The Tribunal wasn't the best place from which to view the three-hundred-foot wide stage, but it was the best place in which to be seen by the audience.

The citizens of Carce would probably have preferred watching exotic animals being slaughtered by the hundred and perhaps even convicted criminals being devoured by cats and bears, but Saxa was wealthy enough that the present spectacle was keeping the audience in its seats.