CHAPTER 1

Calpurnia, daughter to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a consul during that year in which, still almost a child ... – At least she would feel like that. Calpurnia.. I wonder how it feels to call a wife the same name as a friend’s . A friend? Just call him a collaborator . I know how tenderly fond you were of my father, to the same extend as you loved Marcus Licinius. No, certainly it was not the same amount of denarii. Thanks to me, Calpurnius Piso , in whom you saw my reflection, reached the Consulate and, therefore, the imperium, those twenty-four lictores and being appointed as the Governor of Macedonia. Lucius Calpurnius... Was it true, that story about this bust which portrays me , that you had it carved,  making sure that mine were also those limpid, wide eyes  and that ample, full-lipped mouth? Even now my breath and heartbeat speed up whenever all that story about you and Nicomedes returns to my memories. But my nipples get hardened and I still feel like opening up. I was never fully conscious of  how violently my thoughts would tremble while my skin panted in those scarce nights your pale patrician hands would soften that strength with which you used to brandish your sword so that they and your  wet full lips could worship  every curve of my yearning womanhood, filling me up with a plenitude ...  which finally turned out to be ephemeral, which  would never get embodied into a new life growing up in my blood.. Domine

Notwithstanding all this, I still call you that name. Maybe, after all that time, all I have been for you is  a sort of  Vestal girl, like “your little girls” , as you mother used to tell me -Ecastor! I do really miss her, despite it all – the same little child-like  priestesses that I will not see anymore in two or three days. Strange, not to hear or feel them again. It now seems absurd to me , the fact of living day after day without this huge marble staircase, without this scenery in front or the gallery of ancient Vestals that you had paid for. I will have to get accustomed to that peristilus far from here, so tiny and narrow. Yes, I know that anytime I wish I could return to Pater ‘s house .But... No, by no means could a matron of my dignity play the role of an ageing maiden. I will always have Marcia. Marcia, my sweet,beautiful, sisterly Marcia, with no man, either, even when he was alive. I could never understood that, that someone so vehemently adored by my friends could be  so pitiless detested by you. Yes, after all he was your political enemy. How often your mother and I would see you desperate, imitating the screams he used to deliver in the Senate House against the enemies of Roman Republic! Sure, Portia would constantly defend him, her eyes shining out of worship, which  even  embarrassed me. My poor good Portia! How can anyone commit suicide by swallowing burning charcoal? I never believed that. In the same way as I did never accept that Brutus could have been a murderer. I am unwilling to accept that. This good man, so sweet and  easy to use by any wicked person. Like Marcus Portius, he also used to believe in all that we had been taught  in our families. We are the Keepers of that good old Rome. Even though you defended all those newcomers from the provinces.. According to Portia,  her father maintained that you used to do it so as  to get some profit, since he saw another  Publius Clodius in you an did not discard that you would end up just as he did. No, I can´t let my tears spoil this papirus  I have here  in front. My  expenses are really limited thanks to your generosity to Roma people and also to your nephew’s  rapacity.... Or maybe should I call him.... your son? No doubt, you did choose a fine late son, my husband, this sickly scheming guy, who does not lack either talent or your beautiful chiselled face . Marcia, by the way, told me about that rumour running around the Palatine, concerning Brutus’ distant relative, this lady from the Livian-Drusian line who constantly purs, kitty-like, around your boy, despite her big pregnancy. Why should it amaze you? It runs in the family;  you know that better than anyone else. The same snake –like, feline instinct.  Though I never had the chance to speak to you  about it – was there any time for that, anyway? – I had to tolerate her before me every afternoon. She was your mother’s close friend . There was nothing I could do about it. Her haughty, bottomless, dark eyes behind that pretended kindness. “What’s the use of being her official wife?” They would mutely warn me “  He’s my bedmate here in Rome... and you don´t even show a hint of  fertility”. A death-like blast takes hold of me while remembering your nephew’s face. Hasn´t he got your poise, your shapely,solid body.... your glassy, lion-like , cold eyes which  could devastate everyone’s will? My lord, why should you go on hovering, winged and chilly, over my yearning breasts, blowing around my defeated thighs, filling me up, once again as you used to,  making me howl, quenched by that flow of ravishing, lucid virility? Domine.... my lord