44 BCE, Rome
The house has not been still for three days. Sandals sound in the corridor at hours when only servants should be moving, and each visitor leaves behind the smell of wool, wax, or cold iron from a sword hilt touched too often. On the table beside me lie petitions weighted with a seal stone, drafts half corrected, and a cup of watered wine gone warm because I keep turning from it to listen. Rome speaks my name everywhere now, but never in one voice. In the street they cheer, in the porticoes they speculate, and in private rooms men who owe me office lower their eyes before they answer plainly. I am not afraid in the childish sense. I am irritated, alert, tired in the bones, and conscious that the city has begun to hold its breath around me. If I do not put my own account in order now, others will begin from the knife and reason backward.
