Ode To A Banker Read Online Free

extracts to a close.

    Domitian Caesar had been a notable in Rome for four years - long enough to learn the art of the choreographed exit. He stepped forward to congratulate Rutilius; meanwhile his whole party swirled towards us, produced complimentary smiles, then flowed out through the doors with centrifugal smoothness. The young Caesar was sucked after them like a leaf down a drain. He vanished while Rutilius was still blushing at his polite comments. We heard pattering applause from the radically thinned-out crowd. They settled down.

    It was my turn, and I could sense that I had best not read for long.

    By now I had decided to leave out all my love poems. Some had already been weeded out by me at home, due to the fact that my Aglaia sequence had been written before I met Helena Justina and was possibly too personal to recite while she sat and glared at me. One or two more of my sexually specific odes had already ended up being used by her as old fish-bone wrappers. (Accidentally, no doubt.) I now realised it would be considerate to ditch the lot.

    That left my satires. Helena reckoned they were good stuff. I had heard her giggling with Maia as they copied them out for me.

    As I started to read, friends of Rutilius brought wine to refresh him after his ordeal; they were more decent than I had realised and some of the drink wandered my way. That may have encouraged me to forget which passages I was meaning to censor. Instead, when the audience seemed restless I jumped over what I now saw to be the boring, respectable bits. Funny how one's editorial judgement sharpens in front of real people.

    They were grateful for something scurrilous. They even called for an encore. By that point I had run out of options unless I went back to Aglaia and revealed myself to have once harboured philosophical feelings for a slightly trashy circus dancer whose act was all suggestive squinns. Rifling to the end of the scroll, all I could find left were a few lines that I knew my sister Maia had once penned herself. She must have cheekily written them here on my scroll to try to catch me out.

    Rutilius was beaming happily; now his ordeal was finished, he had swigged even more wine than I had. This evening had been intended as a refined diversion, a soir where we would show ourselves to be well-rounded Romans: action men who cherished moments of thoughtful intellect. An ex-consul, one with high hopes, would not thank me for inflicting on his elegant associates a rude ditty by a woman. But those very associates had plied us with a brew of startling power, so I raised my winecup and as Rutilius blearily responded, I read it anyway.

    'Ladies and gentlemen, we must depart, but here's just one final epigram entitled No-longer-a-maiden's Prayer':

    There are those

    From whom a rose

    Would make me smile;

    And others I treated like brothers

    Every once in a while.

    An occasional kiss Hardly came amiss

    Or drove anyone wild - But the gods rot

    The selfish sot

    Who fathered this child!

    I could see Maia laughing helplessly. It was the first time since I had told her she was widowed that she had showed pure, spontaneous mirth. Rutilius Gallicus owed her that.

    By then the audience were so glad of something short that they roared applause. It had been a long night. People were keen to disperse to winebars or worse. Rutilius was being carried off by his old-fashioned wife and his unexpectedly decent friends. We had time to assure one another that our evening had gone well, but he did not invite me to discuss our triumph at his house. That was fine, I need not invite him home to mine either.

    I was preparing myself for ridicule from my own family and associates. I pointedly ignored the writers' circle as they toddled off in their battered sandals to whatever attic rooms they infused with their sour sweat. Petronius Longus pushed through them brutally. 'Who in Hades was the tedious ding-dong you two hired for the eulogy?'

    'Don't blame us.' I