“Rome has become a rich man’s whore!” Lucius’s drunken musings rang in my ears as I trudged through the streets of the camp that fateful morning. The mud was hard, semi-frozen in the cold morning air of autumn. The morning mist that still clung to the hills had not yet been driven away by the sun’s early light There was a definite chill in the heavy air, but I breathed it in deeply, gulping it down, letting my lungs get their fill. The new day did much to clear my head. Despite the wine, I hadn’t slept well last night, but now I felt much better, my spirits improved for the first time in months. I pulled my cloak together and, with renewed determination, turned towards the garrison’s headquarters.

We had spent the night carousing at the house of Quintus Licus, a fabulously wealthy merchant who occasionally invited a few of us to his palatial estate for one of his endless stream of “celebrations.” I should add that this was not one of his legendary orgies which went on for days and were justifiably renowned throughout the Seven Hills. Junior officers were never invited to those events, although occasionally our general might find himself among that privileged elite. No, it was to the more modest affairs that we were invited, along with the lesser lights of Roman society-functionaries and various officials who might someday be of use in one of Licus’s schemes.

It was perhaps a measure of our lowly status that our host didn’t bother to attend himself, but left it to his wife to see that his guests were greeted and their needs met. And if those guests included handsome young officers from the garrison, then his wife Lydia, a brash, bawdy woman with big, floppy tits and a loud braying voice, would be only too happy to oblige. The lady’s propensity for soldiers was legendary in the officers’ quarters, earning her the nickname “Labia.” Even now she watched us with interest from her low couch across the room; her silk gown, cut fashionably low in front so that her tits nearly spilled out whenever she moved; the hem drawn up her long legs shamelessly to lie across the very top of her robust thighs.