CAESAR'S WIFE.

[The following dramatic sketch was lately discovered among a large number of papyri, mostly Greek, found among some ruins in the Fayum. The sketch was probably a light piece, something in the nature of a feuilleton enclosed in a newsletter from Rome, circa 45 B.C.]

Scene : Caesar's house on the Palatine.

[A table laid as for a Roman breakfast : oysters, potted char, a mutton ham, cold peacock, cold nightingales' tongues, preserved oranges, fruits, Falernian wine, water, 4-c. Calpurnia (Caesar's wife) discovered reclining.

Enter CAESAR.

CALM:MEI/4.: Ave, Caesar. I do wish, Julius, you would not be so very late for breakfast. It upsets everything. But after all that does not much matter, considering what a state the household is in, owing to your odious Gaulish slaves and that dreadful British Secretary, who has taught them all to talk about what's their place and what's not, till even our quiet Greeks and Romans become impossible.

CAESAR : extremely sorry that you should have been so worried, my dear. Pray forgive me.

[They eat in silence for a time while Caesar somewhat clumsily props up and turns over the " Acta Diurna." CAL.: I suppose there is nothing in the " Acta "—although

you seem so absorbed in it and unable to throw a word to any one.

CAESAR : I am sorry to be so distracted ; but the fact is, my dear, there is something rather disagreeable I want to say, or rather ought to say, to you, and I find it very difficult to begin.

CAL.: Oh, I think I can guess. I suppose what you mean is that you are going to make yourself disagreeable about those new Persian headdresses. Go on.

CAESAR : Oh no, no—please don't think that. You know I never trouble about money matters. It is something much more disagreeable and much more difficult to say. (Looking about him helplessly.) I wish you would help me out.

CAL.: Which means, of course, that you are going to be specially nasty and insulting.

CAESAR : Well, the fact is, my dear, that I have lately heard that there are some most unpleasant rumours flying round the city about you. Of course, I need not say that I do not believe them. They are certainly not true, and my first

impulse was to pretend not to have beard them. But that was impossible, because everyone would assume that I must know about them, and would sympathize with me, and say how pained they were, and how monstrous it was of people to make such attacks on you when there was, and could be, nothing in them.

CAL.: Caesar, this is disgraceful and abominable, and I won't stand all this beating about the bush. Tell me plainly and exactly what people are saying and what you believe.

No, that does not matter—because you will, of course, believe everything, like the "high-minded Roman" you always imply you are, though you haven't the pluck to say so straight out.

You always believe everything that is nasty and unfair about me, and everybody and everything and call it " seeing life steadily and seeing it whole." Still, I demand to be told something straight out that I can deny.

CAESAR: Well, my dear, that's just the difficulty. I only wanted really to warn you a little, and to tell you what people were saying—solely for your own sake. I purposely paid so little attention that I cannot remember the man's name—I mean the name of the man who was so monstrously and un- fairly associated with you in this talk, and even, they tell me now, in paragraphs in the news-letters.

CAL.: A man ! Out with it, you coward !

CAESAR: Well, my dear, I wish I could. It was Marc— I am sure it began with Marc—but, really and truly, I cannot remember the rest of it. Yes, I am certain it was Marc some-

thing or other. You're generally so good about names, surely you remember ?

CAL.: Caesar, this is an outrage. Who would have thought that a woman of my standing and position, known for years to have resisted every possible temptation, should at her own breakfast table and to her own husband have to answer vile and lying charges of this kind ? It is all very well for you to say you are protecting my honour. That is what men

always say when they want to stab an unfortunate woman in the back. (Rising and stamping her foot.) But I don't care -what you say or what other people say or anything about these scandals that pass from foul lip to foul lip. They are lies, and the people who repeat them know they are lies. It's all utterly wicked and contemptible and vile, and I insist upon being confronted with somebody or other.

CAESAR : Oh, my dear !—my dear, please don't.

CAL.: No, Caesar, I won't be stopped. You shall bear me. I have never had anything to do with the man you are talking about, or done anything to be in the very least ashamed of in my whole life. I, of course, have heard of such a person as Marc, but I have never seen him, or supped with him, or dined with him, or walked with him, or danced with him; and the whole thing, as I have said, is lies from beginning to end. If anyone will dare to make a charge of this kind to my face I will soon tell them what I think of them and their putrid perjuries. As I said before (striking an attitude and beating ker breast), these lies that pass from foul lip to foul lip—

CAESAR : Oh, my dear, do, do be quiet. Just think if any of the servants or people should hear you. I know, of course, quite well that it is all right, but you know what people always think and are sure to say when anybody stamps and talks as you were talking just now—and that dreadful phrase "from foul lip to foul lip "—where did you find it ? From anybody but you I should think it was a sign that you had something to conceal, and the ordinary man is sure to think so, so please do not shout and deny things and talk about suspicion like that. I believe Cato or Cicero says somewhere, and I am sure he was right, that suspicion is the salt of the State and preserves it pure and undefiled.

CAL.: Caesar, what an utter beast you are !

CAESAR : Well, honestly, my dear, I want to stop all this once and for all, and now I have had it out with you it will, I hope, be much easier for all of us. I shall be able to tell anyone and everyone that Caesar's wife welcomes the fullest inquiry, and that you have never had anything to do with Marc— Ah, now at last I have got the name : Marc Antony, that's it—never had anything to do with Marc Antony here in Rome or out of Rome, in Parthia, or Mesopotamia or Scythia or Egypt or Spain or anywhere else in the world, and that the whole thing is not merely a delusion but a wicked lie founded on nothing at all. I feel so happy.

CAL.: Yes, you can say all that and a great deal more, and it is perfectly true, and no one will dare say anything to the contrary. But remember, Caesar, I do not mean to forgive these liars or you for the monstrous way in which I have been and am being treated. Still, to show you how absolutely straight I am and always have been, I will tell you something, though there is not the slightest reason why I should do so, because it has nothing whatever to do with the charges, and if anybody was basing their rumours on what I am going to say—basing their lies, that is—it only shows how devilishly wicked they are, and how undeserving the slightest attention from a pure and innocent woman. (Caesar sighs sadly.) Well, I did once, and I do not care who knows it—in fact, I want everybody to know it—have supper last year with Marc Antony of Dalmatia ; so there ! Dalmatia, remember; Dalmatia, Dalmatia, not Rome. (Caesar whistles.) What has that got to do with it, I should like to know ? Because a man I went to supper• with last year happens to have the same name as this other horrid Marc Antony that you have been talking about and lives in the same house, and was introduced to me by Marc Antony's brother, is that a reason, I ask you, why any sane person should imagine that I might have known and had supper with the other perfectly different Marc Antony of Rome P Only the foul-minded, foul-lipped-

CAESAR : Oh, please, my dear, please, please— CAL.: Yes, Caesar, you shall hear the truth, though, of course, like a man you don't want to. Truth is always disagreeable to a mean-spirited creature like you who encourages slanders against your unfortunate wife. Nobody but a positive fiend could see any connexion between the two Marc Antonies. But, however• inconvenient it may be to you, who would, of course, much rather believe lies than know the truth, I insist on stating it. One of my ladies—well, it was Rufa, I never denied it—about this time last year came to me and asked me whether I would go and have supper with her at the house of Marc Antony—of _Dalmatia, remember— and bring Magistra with me. She told me she had gone

into the thing very carefully, and that I might make my- self perfectly happy that there was no connexion between this Marc Antony and the other, and that she was certain that there was no objection to my going, and that neither you nor anybody else could possibly see the least harm in it. And so I went, and we tried to get up a dance—the Taurus Trot. But the whole thing was a wretched fiasco. Some of them pretended not to know it, and would dance the Ursa Hug instead, and I spoilt my dress, and so did Rufa, who will confirm every word I say. I wish now I hadn't gone, and I never should have done so if I had realized what pigs the people of Rome are, and what a pig you are. It is all utterly odious and disgusting. A woman of my exalted position and comparatively humble origin has a right to claim that no one should suspect her, and, as Rufa says, no one has a right to suspect her either for just the opposite reasons. I have no doubt Magistra would say exactly the same, or some- thing very like it, if I could see her, but she is in Boeotia., and there is no telephone and I can't get at her.

CAESAR : Well, my dear, this has been most unpleasant, and I am very sorry. I have no doubt all you say is quite true, and, as you know, there is nobody who hates a row so much as I do, but, thank Heaven, it is over ; but I do wish it hadn't happened, and I'll try and see what can be done. Still, I am sure you will admit that in the case of Caesar's wife—

CAL.: Now stop that, Caesar, at once. If you go on with that horrible old tag which I have heard you mumble about a hundred times in the last ten years I'll throw the marmalade at your bead. To have that stale stuff about Caesar's wife forced down one's throat is the limit, and I won't stand it, not for a moment.

CAESAR (with great surprise): But, my dear, this really is not fair to me. Why, it was you yourself, ten years ago, when we first married, who said that about Caesar's wife. It was you who invented it and told everybody that you were going to show that it was not enough for Caesar's wife to be straight, but that a person in her position must not even be suspected, however unfairly. You wrote a sonnet about it. I remember being so proud of you at the time; and now you try to put it on to me. It really isn't fair.

CAL.: Caesar, you are intolerable. I know nothing what- ever about all this rubbish. Of course it was you who started it. Anybody would know it was you, not me, by its stupid, fantastic, sentimental sound. The sonnet was dictated by you if there was one. However, I am not going to argue with you

any more. [She rises and flounces out of the room. , CAESAR: Oh dear, oh dear!

[Enter the Private Secretary Sim:talus. SPECTATUS : Ave, Caesar. It is half-past ten. I suppose you have not forgotten that the Thracian envoys have been here waiting for over half an hour ?

CAESAR : I am very sorry indeed. I will come directly. But look here, do you remember when I first married, about ten years ago, that Calpurnia wrote a sonnet about the necessity of Caesar's wife being above suspicion ?

SPECT.: Perfectly, Caesar.

CAESAR : Well, would you look it up for me and give it to Calpurnia. I think she would like to see it.

SPECT.: Certainly, Caesar. I will see that her ladyship's woman brings it up on Saturday morning with her early tea.

CAESAR : Thank you, Spectatus. That will be very kind.