Ve hounded by my own thoughts, fearful of my shadow, eating charity from peasants? I c

Is distinguished
air of a latter-day
man of the world and his intimate knowle dge of everybody's business and ancestry. He was often ordered to go with her at a moment's notice.

But this was the first time she had refused to say where they were going, or why, and there was a hint of malice in her smile that made his blood run
cold. He was a connoisseur
of malice. Marcia leaned on his arm as she went down the steps to her litter. She permitted him to help her in. But
then, while her companion was following through the silken
curtains, she leaned out at the farther side and whispered
to the nearest eunuch.

Livius, climbing into his own gilt vehicle and lifted shoulder-high by eight Numidians, became aware that Marcia's eunuchs had been told to keep an eye on him; two yellow- robed, insufferably impudent inquisitors
strode in among his own attendants. An escort
of twenty praetorian guards and a decurion was waiting at the

gate to take its place between
the lictors and Marcia's litter, but that did not
in any way increase Livius' sense of security. The praetorian guard regarded Marcia as the source of its illegal privileges. It looked to her far more than to the emperor
for favors, buying them with lawless loyalty to her. She ruined discipline by her support of every plea for increased perquisi