No guards were there to disturb the peace of the morning. He needed no lictors to frown at his people as they passed with their eyes downcast. They may not have accepted the crown Mark Antony had offered, but the man himself was untouchable. He did not fear them as men like Sulla and Pompey had feared. They had treated the citizens as violent children, terrified of the same force that had brought them to power. He needed no such protection. Julius sighed to himself as he strolled along the stone walkway, lost in thought.

Without Cleopatra, he might well have left Rome months before. When he was far away, he could love his city as an abstract. He could talk of his home in the same breath as Alexandria, Carthage, and Athens, the centers of empires gone and still rising. The distance somehow lent a romance to the heaving ant-heap of reality. When Rome was thousands of miles to the west, he could see the glory of her scholarship, her inventions and trade. It was difficult to remember those things existed when he was suffocated amongst the petty rivalries and vanity of the Senate. There was such a chasm between the two. When he despaired, he saw only the worst face of the city of his birth. Life teemed there in filthy alleys and a few coins would have bought a woman, a man, or a child. When it was hot, the city stank like an open drain, and when there was frost, thousands starved and froze on a knife edge of survival. Those were the times when he could barely catch his breath. His inner vision crumbled against the hard truths and he ached to ride clear and leave it all behind.

To have the power to make changes had been intoxicating at first. Whatever he had the wit to imagine could be made, created new. It was a temporary joy, like so much else. He hungered for something he could never quite name, and when fresh-faced generals had come with news of unrest in Parthia, he had not sent them away. Mark Antony would rule Rome again, or Octavian perhaps. He had earned the right to leave his mark on the city, and until Julius’s son became a man, the boy would need strong protectors. It would be Octavian, Julius decided, already imagining the expression on his face when he heard the news.