Status Updates From Ode to a Banker (Marcus Did...

“ ‘… Lysa has drawn Vibia into arranging Diomedes’ marriage – not knowing that Diomedes…happened to catch the eye of Vibia herself?’ Euschemon corrected me on one small point: ‘Lysa knows perfectly well that Vibia lusts after him.’..This tangle was turning into a full-blooded Greek tragedy. ‘And does Diomedes return his stepmother’s interest?’ ‘I have no idea.’ When people say that, it always means they know.”

“ He cast a last desperate glance around and rushed off, intent on hasty action of some kind. Everyone knew who Anacrites was. At this rate, his agitation would itself start a run on the Aurelian Bank. For a wild moment, I speculated that I, by simply asking a few crass questions, might yet start an Empire-wide financial crash.”

“… I was running out of leads at the Chrysippus house. The staff were in the clear. The authors all blamed each other, but none of them seemed capable of the sustained violence inflicted on the dead man. The wife and the ex-wife were too devious to assist me. Trouble at the bank was all I had left to investigate.”

“Nothokleptes was not his real name; it was given him by Petronius Longus when we two first shared a bankbox for a year after we came home from the army. Once he acquired a job in the vigiles, Petro made sure he kept his salary and his prissy wife’s dowry locked out of my grasp…Civilised bilinguists will recognise that it means approximately thieving bastard…”

“ In Rome divorce is a fact, the moment one party withdraws from a marriage. So, she was cruelly abandoned after devoting her life to Chrysippus’ interests. That would have enraged her…So we have an enraged witch, now past her prime, pushing a beloved only offspring who is something of a weed, while the ageing tyrant moves on elsewhere, and the new young princess simpers …like a Greek tragedy.”

“I had passed the Chrysippus scroll-shop, but never thought it worth my notice, although I loved reading. I knew the neat, quiet frontage of old, but the staff tended to lurk on the doorstep like off-putting waiters at harbourside cauponas where the fish has been casseroling far too long. Preferring to browse at dealers (and to sneak free reads on the days when I had no money) I had only ever glanced inside …”