Instead, just before he released her he leaned forward and kissed her, very lightly, on the cheek. It was not a lover's kiss. Nor was this formal social statement something a slavegirl would ever expect to receive from a young man of senatorial rank. This was how he must salute his mother and grandmother; how a man of his class would greet a daughter, a sister, or a wife: It was the gesture, between equals, of genuine affection and respect.

PART TWO

ANTONIA CAENIS

When the Caesars were Tiberius and Caligula

NINE

A windswept day in July. A senator, not yet thirty, bronzed from provincial service but today swaddled against the unseasonable gusts in a long brown hooded cloak with a heavy nap, walked into the Imperial Palace. He left his meager escort of slaves at the entrance, then proceeded alone. His pace slowed, more with reminiscence than uncertainty.

Tiberius still lived on Capri. There was, however, an official correspondence bureau here where the young senator conducted some perfunctory business in connection with his end-of-tour report. The secretary in charge, a Greek freedman called Glaucus, dealt with him restlessly; he found quaestors' financial statements thin on detail, loosely written, lackadaisical in style.

"You've missed your date badly with this."

"Sorry. The new man for Crete was held up by wind and weather. I had to wait out there. Not a lot I could do about that." His mildness was even more upsetting than the usual insolence.

Bitterly the secretary unraveled the report. By the stylish standards of this bureau it would be only a draft; Glaucus would work it over furiously before it was copied for the Emperor and filed. Most of the bored young sprats with whom he was forced to deal would never dream of disappointing his lifetime sense of outrage by producing anything remotely adequate. They were intensely competitive, yet had no idea of disciplined hard work.