“Are you sure?”
“Well, no—” he admitted. He struggled with his memory a moment longer. “No!” he decided. “He isn’t dead! You are he! Aren’t you?”
“Possibly.”
“Wait! His name was Victor. Is that your name?”
“Uh-huh.” I saw no reason to deny it.
“Of course! Now I remember you. It was ten years ago. The night of Julia Major’s banishment. You were with her when they came to seize her. But how is it they let you live?”
He’d identified me now and so I improvised. “I escaped and went back to Carthage. I’ve just recently dared to return to Rome.”
“You live dangerously, my friend. The Emperor still smolders at mention of his daughter. And with renewed reason.”
“What reason?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he gestured towards the marble staircase. I followed his gaze. I noticed that the audience had grown very quiet; an expectant hush hung over the gardens. The respectful stillness continued as a female figure appeared at the top of the stairs and poised there.
It was the imposing figure of a girl in her early or mid twenties, a figure at the height of its ripeness. The girl was about five-eight, slender, but beautifully rounded in all the right places. Her breasts were large and round, carried proud and high, her hips sleekly curved to stress the narrowness of her waist and arching towards long, exciting legs. Her hair was thick and black and flowing, the features beneath both aristocratic and sensual, the nose and jawline Patrician, the eyes dark and smouldering behind long lashes, the cheekbones high, the forehead haughty, but the lips pouting and inviting. She was a Venus in flesh, and the flesh was all too apparent under the transparent green negligee she was wearing.
As I said before, it was a chilly night. I couldn’t see the girl’s goose pimples from this distance, but I could guess at them. Nor was I the only one to make such a guess. It wouldn’t be long before Ovid would immortalize the vision in the following satiric words:
“If she appear in her negligee, cry out:
“ ‘You inflame my passion!’
“Then add in anxious tones: ‘Take care!
“ ‘You’ll catch a cold in this fashion.’ ”
Ovid would pay dearly for indulging himself in writing this poem. The lady who was the subject of it would also pay. And so would I.
But I had no idea of any of that as I watched the beauty on the marble stairs. Nor had I any idea who she was. It was only after I voiced some noncommittal remark about her beauty that Ovid enlightened me as to her identity.
“Don’t you recognize her?” he asked.
“No. Should I?”
“I should think you would, she’s the image of her mother.”
I looked at him blankly. “Her mother?”
“Yes. Julia Major.”
“You mean the Princess Julia? The Emperor Augustus’ daughter?”
“Yes,” Ovid told me. “The lady who almost cost you your life. That is her daughter, Julia Minor.” He pointed towards the figure on the stairs. “They are called ‘Major’ and ‘Minor’ to distinguish between them.”
“I never really saw her mother’s face,” I told Ovid. “So I wouldn’t see the resemblance.”
We stopped speaking as the figure on the stairs began to descend. Her movements didn’t so much constitute a dance as an entrance, an undulating descent suitable to a goddess dropping in from Olympus-—a naughty goddess come to sport with the mortals. The flickering torches which lined the staircase highlighted her nudity under the diaphanous gown.
She undulated her ample hips, thrust her bosom insinuatingly, caressed her body in lewd, suggestive, yet graceful motions. The goddess she played was the goddess of fertility. And when she reached the foot of the stairs, she prostrated herself and lay panting, her skin moist despite the cold, the green gossamer clinging to its whiteness in a way that stressed her sexuality without concealing it.
The audience was now on its feet, still quiet, but poised, tensed, as if about to spring. Julia Minor’s eyes moved slowly over them. Finally they paused at Ovid. She raised a hand and beckoned to him. He moved towards her quickly. When he reached her she held up her arms. Ovid fell on her and immediately the restraint of the onlookers broke. The signal had been given, and now the orgy began!
People rushed at each other in a frenzy, tearing at their clothes. The chill of the night air was forgotten as the greed of lust swept over the crowd. Near me a girl stretched out on a bench and bared one breast, holding it up in her hand and shaking it in open invitation to any male who might care to respond. Just beyond her, two women had pinned a man to the ground and were tearing at his clothes while a third poured wine over his thighs.
Slaves moved among the frenzied guests dispensing more wine and aphrodisiacs and steaming platters of food. Too girls -- Lesbians— thrashed about in the bushes behind me, squealing with delight, each of their heads concealed beneath the other’s toga. In front of me now, three men and three women had formed a circle of eroticism, each joined to the other in a pattern that was genital, oral and anal. Behind them a group of young men were playing a sophisticated game of leapfrog with their togas pulled up over their waists.
I looked over the heads of the crowd towards Julia Minor and Ovid. She was astride him now, mother-naked, the green negligee thrown to the winds, her hair streaming wildly behind her as she bounced up and down in a frenzy of ecstasy. Ovid was beating her with his fists, pummeling her the way a jockey whips his mount with a riding crop. They were moving so fast their bodies merged in a blur.
The three women released the man they’d been assaulting and their eyes darted around to find another victim. One of them pointed at me and before I could move they were on me. Wine poured over a plump breast and it was thrust into my mouth as I was forced to the ground by their weight. The sour-sweet taste assailed my senses while a second of the girls half-tore the clothes from my lower body and fell on my thighs and belly with a series of hot kisses. The third——a petite, thin, but volatile red-head— had one of my hands between both of hers and lowered herself on it greedily, almost squatting, writhing about in mounting delight until her nether mouth became a vise which loosened only with the outpouring of the nectar of her passion.
The second girl, a voluptuous blonde, had located her target and was sipping at it voraciously now. She’d contrived to grasp my foot with the fulcrum of her sexuality and balanced there as she fulfilled her hunger, her lush body tense with exquisite anticipation. Meanwhile the first of the sirens had pulled her breast away and was trying to squeeze in so that her nether mouth might replace it at my lips.
I was overwhelmed. There was nothing to do but go along with the mounting sex play. At first I’d been passive, but now I became active. I heaved upwards and managed to displace all three of my playmates. I scrambled to my feet.
The blonde was left on her knees, crouching. I fell on her from behind, grasping her plump breasts. She reared and my manhood was locked as we began our fierce gallop.
The redhead knelt behind me and I felt the hot flame of her tongue sweep the sac of my virility to urge me on to even wilder thrusts. The first beauty, a brunette, stood in front of me and held her toga high, thrusting the thick black triangle of curls below her belly towards my lips. I obliged her, going berserk, riding the blonde with all my energy, spurred on by the exquisite sensation provided by the redhead’s eager tongue, virtually wallowing neck deep in the womanhood of the brunette.
My passion exploded. The blonde screamed and followed suit. The redhead encompassed me with her mouth urging the last of my passion to its release. The brunette almost suffocated me as she joined us on the final lap of our wild journey. A moment later the four of us fell to the ground in an exhausted tangle of arms and legs.