Soon Tullia came running out to greet us, dressed in nothing but a transparent shift of silk, her hair neatly combed and her face painted.
“I’m so pleased,” she cried joyfully, “that Marcus has returned to me so soon and has brought his things with him too. Now he need never go away from here again, but we can live happily together for the rest of our days.”
She ordered a purse of soft red leather to be handed to the magistrate as compensation for his trouble, and then said ruefully, “Of course in my heart I did not doubt Marcus for a moment, but a lonely widow has to be careful, and in his younger days Marcus was quite fickle. I am delighted that he has now brought his lawyer with him so that we can draw up the marriage contract at once. I wouldn’t have imagined, dear Marcus, that your wits were ordered to that extent, so disordered were they in my bed last night.”
My father cleared his throat and swallowed, but not a word was forthcoming. Tullia took us into her large rooms and let us admire the mosaic floor, the murals and the beautifully proportioned panels. She let us look into her bedroom, but pretended to be shy, covering her face.
“No, no,” she cried. “Don’t go in there. Everything is in disorder after last night.”
My father at last managed to find his voice.
“You have won, Tullia,” he snapped, “and I submit to my fate. But at least send the magistrate away so that he need no longer witness my degradation.”
Handsomely dressed slaves hovered around us and did their best to serve and please us. Two small naked boys were running about the house playing at cupids. I was afraid that they would catch cold until I realized that the stone floor in this magnificent house was heated by hot pipes. The magistrate and my father’s lawyer consulted together for a while and decided that a promise of marriage given in the presence of witnesses was legally valid without a public marriage. The magistrate and his policemen left when he had been convinced that my father was prepared to sign a marriage contract without protest. The lawyer made the magistrate promise to keep silent about the whole affair, but even I with my scant sense realized that a person in his position could not possibly resist passing on such a delicious piece of scandal.
But was it in fact a scandal? Was it not flattering for my father that such a noble and obviously immensely rich woman would stop at nothing to marry him? Despite my father’s modest habits and outward humility, he must have possessed hidden qualities of which I knew nothing and which would certainly rouse the curiosity of the whole of Rome, both about him and also about me. In fact this marriage could be to my advantage in every way. At least it would force my father to stay in Rome for the time being so that I need not drift about in this city in which I still felt insecure.
But what could the beautiful pampered Tullia see in my father? For a moment I was seized with the suspicion that she led a frivolous life and was up to her ears in debt and so wanted my father’s money. But in fact my father was not especially rich by Rome’s standards, although his freedmen in Antioch and elsewhere in the East were wealthy. My suspicions were allayed when my father and Tullia, in complete agreement, decided to make the marriage contract so that even in the future they would each keep control of their own fortunes.
“But whenever you have the time or feel like it, dear Marcus,” suggested Tullia mildly, “I hope you will talk to my treasurer and go through my accounts and give me advice about my affairs. What does a simple widow understand about such things? I have heard it said that you have become a clever businessman, although no one would have suspected it of you in your youth.”
My father remarked in annoyance that now that law and order reigned in the country, thanks to Emperor Claudius and his freedmen, a sensibly placed fortune grew by itself,
“But my head is empty and I have not a single sensible thought left,” he said, scratching his chin. “I must go to the barber and the baths to rest and collect what is left of my wits.”
But Tullia led us straight past the marble statues and wells in the vast inner courtyard of the house, over to its far side where she showed us her own bathhouse with hot and cold pools, steam room and cooling room. A barber, a masseur and a bath-slave were all waiting there ready to serve us.
“You need never again pay a single denarius to the clothes-minders at the public baths, or expose yourself to the crush and smell of the people,” Tullia explained. “If you feel like reading, poetry or music after your bath, there is special room here for that purpose. Go now, Marcus and Minutus, and bathe, while I consult with my dear friend Laelia on how we shall arrange our lives from now on. We women understand such things better than you impractical men.”
My father slept until sunset. When we had dressed in the new clothes the clothing steward had laid out for us, the house was suddenly filled with guests. Most of them were quite young, happy and cheerful people, but among them were also two fat old men of debauched appearance whom I could not respect although one of them was a senator. I could at least talk about horses to a senior centurion from the Praetorian Guard, but to my surprise he showed a much greater interest in the women who, after drinking wine without restraint, loosened their clothes to be able to breathe more freely.
When I noticed which way this marriage feast was developing, I went to find Barbus, whom the servants had been generously regaling. He was holding his head and said, “I have experienced greater hospitality licit: than I have ever known before and would Have even been married oil’ in a flash if I hadn’t, as an old veteran, known when to call a halt. This house is no place for you, Minutus, nor for an old soldier like me either.”
The music played on and naked dancers and acrobats were writhing all over the floors as I went in search of my father. He was lying on a couch beside Tullia in gloomy silence.
“Perhaps it is the custom in Rome,” I said, “that noble women are sick all over the place and the men make indecent gestures at me, but I simply cannot tolerate that anyone seems to think they have the right to paw me anywhere on my body. I’m neither a slave nor a eunuch. I want to go home.”
“I’m much too weak-willed and comfortable,” my father admitted, “to extract myself from this depravity, but you must try to be stronger than I. I’m glad to hear your decision, and that you yourself have made it. I am forced to stay here, for no one can avoid his destiny, but it would be better if you lived with Aunt Laelia, and anyhow you have your own fortune now. You would gain nothing by living in your stepmother’s house.”
Tullia was not looking at me so kindly as she had the previous evening. I asked if I could come the next morning to fetch my father so that we could choose a horse for me, but she briskly cut me off with the words, “Your father is too old to ride. He would only fall off the horse and injure his valuable head. At the centenary festival parade he can lead his horse.”
I realized I had lost my father, and a sense of desolation came over me, for I had experienced his favor for a very short time. But I also realized that it was better for me to harden myself and create a life of my own. I went in search of Aunt Laelia, hitting out as hard as I could at a half-naked woman with glittering eyes who tried to hang around my neck. But the blow on her backside only spurred her on, so Barbus was forced to pull her away.
Tullia was so pleased to be rid of us so easily that she let us take her own sedan. Inside the sedan Aunt Laelia adjusted her clothes and began to chatter.
“I’ve heard a great deal of gossip about what goes on in the new houses in Rome,” she said, “but I could not believe my ears. Valeria Tullia is considered to be a decent woman. Perhaps marriage has made her quite unrestrained after the abstemious life of widowhood, although there were many fine men who seemed to make themselves at home at her house. Your father will have much to do keeping her in order.”