Massilia had indeed been spared from destruction, but a strange twist of fortune had spared Hieronymus from his fate, and he had ended up in Rome living in my house. Hieronymus was tall and physically striking, with a curious demeanor. Having begun life as the heir of one of Massilia's more powerful families, but having spent most of his life as a beggar, he combined the haughtiness of a fallen aristocrat with the crafty pragmatism of a streetwise survivor. He often played referee in our little group, since he favored neither Caesar nor Pompey.

Canininus snorted. "The siege of Massilia! I'd already forgotten about it. Massilia was nothing more than a pimple on Gaul's butt! Caesar simply dispatched Trebonius to pop it open before it could fester."

Hieronymus raised an eyebrow. How he had despised his native city while he lived and very nearly died there! Since he had left Massilia, I never once heard him express a sentimental longing for the place. Still, it rankled him to hear a Roman express contempt for the city of his Greek fore fathers.

"If 'squeezing the pimple' of Massilia, as you put it, was such a smallish thing," he said dryly, in slightly stilted Latin, "then why did Caesar reward Trebonius by making him city praetor for the year and charge him with enforcing Caesar's own plan to shore up the Roman economy? Such an important task is handed by a man like Caesar only to one who has shown his true mettle. I think that Caesar must have rated the taking of Massilia a far more important achievement than you do, my friend."

"In the first place," snapped Canininus, "Caesar didn't 'make' Trebonius city praetor, the voters did."

This met with catcalls from the Pompeians in the group. "Nonsense!" said the most vocal of them, Volcatius, who had a surprisingly strong voice for such an old man. "The only voters left in Rome are the common rabble, who'll cast their lots however Caesar tells them to.