Asteria woke ravenously hungry, but she could not speak. All she could do was cry.
Before a brightly colored mural stood a young mother, beautiful and richly dressed, holding another infant in her arms. Her gaze was as soft as water.
The crying disturbed the noblewoman. She called something toward the doorway in words Asteria could not understand, and a beautiful enslaved woman hurried into the room, picked her up, and carried her away to be nursed.
Asteria was the noblewoman's daughter, raised on an enslaved wet nurse's milk. The other baby was her twin brother. Their birth mother was especially fond of the boy and even nursed him herself.
While she was being bathed, Asteria managed to see her own face.
Lilac eyes and fair skin flushed with pink—she looked no different from the goddess of shooting stars she had once been.
Her brother's skin was more wrinkled than a wilted radish, his eyes were lilac too, and his rusty-red hair was strikingly bright.
Their biological father, Drusus, was busy with political affairs and showed little affection for his family. He came to inspect the infants in their swaddling clothes only once every three or five days.
He was obviously much older than his almost girlish wife, with fine wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes.
His hair was the same shade as his son's: brown tinged with red.
As she grew, Asteria gradually became familiar with this new world.
Her name was now Livia Drusilla, and she lived in the Roman Republic.
Its inhabitants divided their fellow human beings into ranks according to several different standards.
First came the two broad categories of free people and slaves. Free people were divided further into citizens and noncitizens.
In the past, only freeborn residents born in the city of Rome, with at least one Roman parent, had held citizenship.
Several decades earlier, Rome's allied city-states elsewhere in Italy had grown deeply dissatisfied with their dominant partner and demanded citizenship for themselves.
The Social War had broken out, and the Romans had finally compromised, enacting the Julian Law on Citizenship.
From then on, some other Italians could become proud Roman citizens and enjoy privileges including the right to vote.
But the gates of glory were never opened to women.
Female citizens could possess certain economic rights, leave their homes, and attend banquets alongside men, but they could not participate in politics. Throughout their lives, they were required to remain under the guardianship of a male relative.
Her mother belonged to a distinguished family from the city of Fundi and had close ties with the Claudii Nerones.
At fifteen, Alfidia obeyed her family's wishes and married the thirty-four-year-old Drusus. The twins were born that same year.
Marriages between much older husbands and young wives were extremely common in Rome.
Patriarchal marriages were the norm, and daughters could only obey their fathers' arrangements and marry older men.
Noblewomen belonged to their families from birth. Even their names had only two parts: a feminine form of their clan name, followed by their family name.
Livia Drusilla. From the name alone, anyone could tell that the girl had been born into the Drusus branch of the Livian clan.
If Livia had any sisters, every one of them would also have been named Livia, distinguished only by a number.
Male citizens, however, could have three-part names. The first was a personal name, such as Marcus or Gaius.
The middle name was the masculine form of the clan name, such as Livius or Claudius.
The last was the family name, such as Drusus.
Several centuries earlier, a Livian ancestor had killed an enemy general named Drusus in single combat. To commemorate the honor, he adopted the defeated man's name as his family name, passing down the Livii Drusi line.
Livia's father was called Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus.
The additional name Claudianus at the end signified his exceptionally illustrious birth in one of Rome's most distinguished clans, the Claudii.
As a young child, he had been adopted by Rome's richest man at the time, the elder Drusus, known as “the Reformer.”
Not long afterward, his adoptive father was assassinated. At the age of four, the adopted boy inherited the elder Drusus's name and fortune.
Although he had been adopted into the Livian family, the political alliance between the two houses meant he retained an important place among the Claudii Nerones. He also inherited his biological father's property by will.
Drusus had served as praetor four years earlier and was now a senator.
Throughout her childhood, Livia constantly saw all kinds of guests passing in and out of her father's meeting room.
Most were clients and freedmen who earned money for the family. The others were relatives of exceptionally high standing.
…
When Livia was ten, civil war erupted in Rome, and Julius Caesar and Pompey fought relentlessly.
Three years passed, and the civil war largely subsided. An eunuch serving Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII cut off Pompey's head and presented it to Caesar, only to incur Rome's hostility.
After conquering Egypt, Caesar led his legions against the kingdom of Pontus, defeated it, and returned in triumph.
Birdsong awakened the sleeping Palatine Hill. As always, sunlight shone bright as gold.
Livia woke and suddenly remembered she had lessons that day. She immediately sat up in bed.
With the slaves' help, she dressed in a dark-blue gown edged with gold embroidery and sat before a marble table, handling a wax writing tablet while Hila combed her hair.
Hila was a strikingly beautiful enslaved woman, gentle, honest, and dependable. Her chestnut hair resembled strands of seaweed, and her large amber eyes shone brightly.
She had served as both wet nurse and nanny, caring for Livia from infancy onward.
“Livia!” Gaius burst into the room, clutching his own wax tablet.
He came up to his sister, set the tablet on the table, gripped a metal stylus, and leaned his elbows on the marble surface, staring at her with wide eyes.
Livia looked exactly as she had in her previous life, with pale golden hair and lilac eyes.
Her younger brother had fair skin, violet eyes, and features so exquisite that he resembled a god. He looked very much like his sister; only the color of his hair was inherited from their father, Drusus.
“Please, please let me copy your grammar answers! I really hate Greek!”
Livia generously showed her brother the wax tablet set in a bronze frame that she held in her hands.
Gaius was in poor health. He would faint after standing in the sun for only a short while, and no amount of exercise could strengthen him. He had been sick hundreds of times throughout his childhood and could not undergo ordinary military training in his teens like other boys his age.
Academically, he had studied Latin and Greek for six years but could never remember grammatical rules or how words were spelled. Geometry and arithmetic were about the only subjects at which he did well.
Their tutor was a Greek slave. Even when his foolish pupil drove him to the edge of endurance, he could show no dissatisfaction.
When Livia had been the goddess of shooting stars, she had spoken Greek. It was not that she lacked patience for helping her brother, but some children simply were not born to study.
“Why don't you have Tiro copy them for you?” the girl asked.
“He's been distracted these last few days. Whenever I call him, he takes ages to respond. I don't know what's gotten into him.”
Tiro was Hila's son and had inherited his mother's delicate features. His hair was black, and his eyes were as green as underwater plants.
He was Gaius's enslaved study companion and about the same age as the twins. He was exceptionally good at Greek and very quick-witted.
Livia suspected that when Tiro grew older, he might be freed and employed as a translator, or perhaps help the Livian family manage its businesses and estates.
“You're so beautiful! Are we really twins? Your hair is such a gorgeous color! Gold with a silvery sheen… Aren't those the most enchanting curls in all Rome? How can such a wonderful color even exist? Surely it must be a gift from Venus! You must be the very model of a noble young lady!”
As he copied the exercises onto his wax tablet, Gaius racked his brains for compliments, using every scrap of rhetoric he had managed to remember in his entire life.
“Reddish-brown is lovely too. I'd gladly dye mine with henna leaves to make it look like yours.” Livia pointed at her brother's hair and made a few halfhearted polite remarks.
“Hila, do you still have powdered henna leaves? My sister says she wants to dye her hair.”
“Yes. If my mistress would like them, I can fetch them right now—”
“Another time. We have to study Greek first.” Livia interrupted Hila.
The twins left the room. Four or five slaves hurried through the gallery carrying ingredients toward the kitchen.
The last of them held a bound peacock. Its feathers gleamed a magnificent blue in the sunlight, and its colorful tail trailed across the ground like a waterfall.
“What are they preparing? Why have they brought in a peacock? Are we going to eat it?” Gaius did not interrupt their work. Instead, he asked his sister.
“We're holding a dinner party today, before the sun sets.”
Livia recalled how increasingly often messengers had come and gone from their father's study over the past few days.
The previous day, slaves had brought two cartloads of fruit and meat from the family's country estate through the mansion's front entrance beside the atrium.
Perhaps they were going to entertain someone important.
“I want to go see what they've got in the kitchen and taste it before dinner!” Gaius was suddenly seized by greed.
The servants assigned to kitchen work were the lowest-ranking slaves in the household and did not even qualify to appear before their master.
“You'd better not make trouble. They wouldn't dare stop you from tasting something, but these dishes are for distinguished guests. If anything goes wrong, they'll be punished. You shouldn't do that.”
Year after year, Livia played the role of the sensible elder sister, wearily repeating one warning after another.
Her younger brother had no particularly unpleasant habits, and his temper was good. He was simply a little dim and hopelessly carefree.
The boy nodded and promised not to cause trouble.
As they passed through the courtyard, Tiro was kneeling on the mosaic floor, cleaning wax masks with a feather brush.
There were two rows of masks, four to a row, displayed along the route that guests would take to the banquet hall.
These were likenesses of ancestors who had served as consuls of Rome, faithfully modeled on their actual faces, bearing witness to the glorious history of the Livian clan.
Livia could not name the four men in the top row, although she knew the last of them had once been a dictator.
The third mask in the second row belonged to the elder Drusus's grandfather, a leader of the aristocratic faction who had earned the family a staggering fortune during the Third Punic War.
He had served as consul in the same year as Scipio Aemilianus, who destroyed Carthage, and had been the chief opponent of the Gracchi brothers, leaders of the popular faction. He was granted the title “Guardian of the Senate.”
The fourth in that row was the father of the elder Drusus, “the Reformer.” He had married a cousin of the dictator Sulla. His second son was adopted by Scipio Aemilianus, later married Sulla's daughter, and also became a consul.
The Livian clan was not officially classified among Rome's hereditary nobles, yet it was exceedingly prominent. Through adoption and intermarriage, it had close ties to such leading clans as the Cornelii, Aemilii, and Claudii.
For the past century, the Drusi had been firmly entrenched in the aristocratic faction.
Nevertheless, during the civil war a few years earlier, her father had chosen neutrality.
He had kept watching from the sidelines, siding neither with Pompey and the aristocrats nor with Caesar and the popular faction.
Tiro brushed away the last speck of dust and remained kneeling, staring absently at the Livian ancestors as though something weighed on his mind. His green eyes were like a pond in spring, reflecting the masks of the dead.
Gaius stepped forward and slapped his left hand firmly onto Tiro's shoulder.
“What are you daydreaming about? I'm relying on you to take notes for me today. Hurry up, put your things away, and come to class with me.”
Tiro started in fright, hurriedly apologized to his master, and asked to be punished.
“Why would I punish you?” Gaius pulled him to his feet. “When I turn fifteen, I'm going to Athens to study for two years. Mother will certainly send you with me. I wonder if the oranges there are sweeter than the ones in Rome.”
“When I inherit the family property someday, I'll definitely grant you your freedom. You're so clever. You can help me manage the villas and estates outside Rome.” Gaius made the little slave this solemn promise.
Tiro lifted his face, his gaze gradually clearing. He nodded, accepted the writing materials from his master's hands, and followed the twins into the classroom.
Their tutor was a highly educated slave from Athens. He began by testing the students on the most basic Greek verb conjugations.
Gaius hummed and hesitated for a long time, stammering out several irrelevant remarks while squirming miserably in his seat.
Livia held her tablet of grammatical rules beneath the table and gave her brother a kick.
He received the hint like a gift from heaven. Every half-sentence, he could not resist stealing a few glances at the notes on the tablet. At last, he produced a respectable answer.
The teacher overlooked the cheating and continued introducing the students to new material.
It was not long before Gaius's mind wandered again. He drew a chicken on his wax tablet with his stylus, adding three straight lines sticking up from its head, each topped with a little circle.
“Look at the peacock I drew!”
“That's supposed to be a peacock?” The hideous doodle assaulted Livia's eyes. She would never understand how children's minds worked. “If you don't pay attention, Father will scold you.”
“Then let him scold me. He's been scolding me for over ten years. What's one more time?” Her brother bit down on his stylus, his thoughts already far beyond the house.
“Today's market day. I want to go out and have some fun,” he suddenly said to his sister shortly after the lesson ended.
“Keep an eye on your purse. Don't lose it again…” Livia repeated her warnings mechanically. “Don't waste money on useless things, and don't cause trouble!”
On the last market day, her brother had been swindled out of five hundred sesterces and come home with a tiny bottle of cheap wine from Raetia. He had essentially paid an ordinary soldier's annual wages for a few drops of inferior wine. Their father had given him a savage scolding when he returned—yet whenever Drusus himself hosted a dinner party, every dish cost more than that.
“Why don't you come with me?” Gaius suggested.
“Hila is supposed to teach me weaving at noon.”
Perhaps it was because she was always eager to find out what was happening beyond the house since her journey through time, but she could never settle down enough to learn textile crafts.
To her, the arrangement of threads was what the writings of ancient Greek sages were to Gaius.
She could never weave a decent piece of cloth, nor did she want to, just as her brother could never speak a full sentence of Greek properly.
Their mother, Alfidia, was endlessly troubled by this and made her practice weaving with the female slaves every day at noon.
“Come out and play with me instead. When we get back, I'll make a fuss with Mother. She won't be able to do anything about it.”
Livia agreed to her brother's proposal. She had no desire to stay home weaving, and it would be better to wander about, learn what had been happening lately, and experience the customs of this world for herself.
“All right. I'll go find something to wear. Wait here.”
She chose a dark-blue outer mantle, a long cloak Roman women wore that could also be pulled over the head.
The household slaves were busy preparing the mansion, each occupied with their own duties. Instead of riding in a litter, the twins set out through the front gate on foot with two guards.
