Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus stood alone by the undecorated turf altar, dressed in a simple white garment, worn short and loose in the Greek fashion. The muffled moans of his wife, attended by a single young midwife, seemed to cause him an actual physical pain he struggled to contain. For all his pre-eminence as the foremost general of the Roman world, no guests attended this birth and no supplicants crowded the room. The walls of this borrowed villa were as bare as the altar and the single tallow wad guttering in the sconce lent the colonnaded room a ghostly feel. None of the normal rules of celebration were to be gifted to the birth of this child and the fact that it was taking place on the day of the Festival of Lupercalia was something that mocked rather than honoured the event.
‘Hot, honeyed wine,’ said Cholon, his young personal slave, proffering an unadorned stone goblet. Aulus shivered slightly in the chill of the early spring air as he took the drink. ‘Your cloak, master?’
‘No, thank you,’ Aulus replied automatically, his voice a hoarse whisper.
His servant was unsure if he had heard him right, though he never doubted any response would be polite. It always was, whether the person addressed was a common soldier or the noble monarch of a Roman client-state. No one exemplified more than Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus the virtues of which Rome was so proud; he was upright, honest and brave, a soldier’s soldier revered by his men. The fickle Rome mob cheered him too, as a man who paid more than lip service to ancient freedoms, yet when his city was in turmoil and he was desperately needed in Rome, here he was skulking in this empty country villa. The mob would not cheer him for that!