I promised her all this as she asked me so persuasively. All I was thinking of was what kind of horse I should get. At that time not even Cleopatra could have competed with a good horse in my mind. I laughed when I gave my word and told her she was a nice but rather peculiar girl. We parted smiling and good friends. I was in a good mood afterward. When I got home, my father was just getting into Tullia’s sedan to accompany her home, for she lived at Viminalis on the other side of the city, on the boundary between Altasemita and Esquilina. My father’s eyes were staring and glassy and he did not ask me where I had been, but just told me to go to bed in good time. I suspected that he had drunk a good deal of wine but it was not noticeable from his walk.
I slept soundly and long, but was very disappointed when my father was not at home in the morning. I had hoped we could go straight to the stables to choose a horse for me. The house was being cleaned after the feast and Aunt Laelia complained of a headache. I asked where my father had gone so early.
“Your father is old enough to know what he’s doing,” she replied angrily. “He had a great deal to discuss with his erstwhile friend. Perhaps he stayed the night at Tullia’s house. She has room for more men than him.”
Barbus and I whiled away the time by playing dice in the bushes in the garden while the cleaners set about the house indoors with their brooms and buckets. Spring was in the air. At last my father returned at midday, unshaven, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He had covered his face with a fold of his toga and there was a lawyer with him carrying scrolls of paper and writing materials. Barbus gave me a nudge as a sign that it would be wiser to keep quiet.
My father, in contrast to his usual behavior, kicked over the cleaners’ buckets and ordered the slaves to vanish from his sight with all speed. After hastily consulting the lawyer, he called me in. Aunt Laelia was weeping copiously and I hardly dared stammer out a question to my father about whether he now had time to come with me to choose a horse.
“You and your horse will drive me mad,” he exclaimed. His face was twisted with rage and when one looked at him, it was easy to realize that in his youth he had gone about for years in a state of mental confusion. But he soon regretted his rage.
“No, no, it’s all my own fault,” he said. “It’s my own weakness that has driven me into this state. A stroke of ill fortune has changed all my plans. Now I must go back to Antioch without a moment’s delay. So I have allotted to you the income from some of my estates in Caere and my
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properties here in the city. It will give you more than the annual income of a thousand sesterces required of a knight. Aunt Laelia will have to look after the house. It can be your home. I have also allotted an annuity to Aunt Laelia. And it’s nothing to cry about. My lawyer will be your guardian. He is of an old noble family. You can go and choose a horse together at once if you want to, but I must return to Antioch immediately.”
My father was so confused that he was about to rush out on to the street at once to set off on his journey, but the lawyer and Aunt Laelia restrained him. They arranged for his luggage and clothes and food, although he said impatiently that he could hire a wagon at the city gates and go to Puteoli and buy everything he wanted on the way. Suddenly chaos reigned in our house after the cheerful festivities of the previous day. We could not let him go away like an exile, the corner of his mantle hiding his face. So we all went with him, Aunt Laelia, the lawyer, Barbus and I. Last came the slaves carrying his hurriedly packed belongings.
When my father reached the Capua gate below Coelius, he let out a deep sigh of relief and began to bid us all farewell, saying that he could already see golden freedom looming ahead of him on the other side of the gate and that he should never have left Antioch. But at the gate, one of the city magistrates came up to us with his official stave in his hand and two powerful policemen behind him.
“Are you the Roman knight, Marcus Mezentius Manilianus?” he asked my father. “If you are, then there is a lady of high position who has important business with you.”
At first my father turned scarlet and then ashen gray in the face. He looked down at the ground, said that he had nothing to say to any lady, and then tried to leave through the city gates.
“If you try to go outside the walls,” the magistrate warned him, “I am ordered to bring you before the City Prefect and it is my duty to arrest you to prevent you from escaping.”
The lawyer hurried up* to my father, asking the magistrate to disperse the crowd that had already gathered, and also asking what my father was accused of.
“It is a simple and discreditable story,” explained the magistrate. “I should prefer to see those involved settle it between them. The noble senator’s widow Valeria Tullia insists that last night Manilianus, in the presence of witnesses, de jure promised her marriage and afterward de facto slept with her. When she for some reason or other doubted Manilianus’
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