JULIA SAID, still delighted with the prospect. “You haven’t wasted your day entirely if you’ve arranged that!” She sat at her vanity table while her handmaid, a sly, devious girl named Cypria, applied her cosmetics. “We were invited by Milo,” I reminded her, nettled as always that she barely tolerated my old friend, who had been a humble galley rower, while Fausta was a patrician of the Cornelians, the equal of the Julians. “And he’s the most important man in Rome.” The consuls that year were busy with their other projects, leaving the praetor urbanus the man with the real power. “For this year only,” she said, reminding me that a magistracy is for a year, while noble birth is forever. “You’re being uncommonly snobbish today,” I said. She swiveled on her stool, and Cypria began arranging her hair. “Only because I think this friendship between you and Milo will lead to disaster.
