aut viam inveniam aut faciam.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

Ante Diem V Non. Mai. (Two days after the party)

The Baths

I did not sleep well; although I barely ate at the princess's party, my stomach was as leaden as after the greatest feast. Ageria did not quiz me on our return home; my dear one is too kind for that. But she sat up with me for a long time, until I saw how her eyelids grew heavy and I made her go to bed. Sleep came only in the thin hour before dawn, and when my slave came to wake me an hour or so later I felt as if I had had no rest. I spent much of yesterday in a strange fog, my mind feeling somehow similar to the sensation of a limb numbed by sleep.

And then, last night, feeling rushed back, and I thought of Tetricus. I wept, and that shames me, that I have let myself be so weak. Had Tetricus died, no one would begrudge me the manly tears for a fallen friend; but I wept like a woman for her inconstant lover. There is no honour in that. Still, it seemed to calm me, and I slept without dreams for the first time in weeks.

Today I feel more myself, and after my customary business at the Forum I, like most of town, head to the baths. I pass through the atrium, where young men are stretching and running, past the women's entrance and into the men's baths. I take off my clothes in the apodyterium, entrusting them to my own slave, because the slaves of bath houses are generally worthless at best and thieves at worst, and make my way into the tepidarium. It is not yet full, and so I do not have to wait for a space for my slave to oil me. I lie on a table as he pours warm oil over my back, and I close my eyes and listen to the chatter of two senators about the corn trade, while across the room a fat merchant whimpers as a slave plucks his chest hair.