She had more accurately aimed and nicely balanced work to do than even
Commodus could do with javelins against a living target.




VII. MARCIA



In everything but title and security of tenure Marcia was empress of the
world, and she had what empresses most often lack--the common touch.
She had been born in slavery. She had ascended step by step to fortune,
by her own wits, learning by experience. Each layer of society was known
to her--its virtues, prejudices, limitations and peculiar tricks of
thought. Being almost incredibly beautiful, she had learned very early
in life that the desired (not always the desirable) is powerful to sway
men; the possessed begins to lose its sway; the habit of possession
easily succumbs to boredom, and then power ceases. Even Commodus,
accordingly, had never owned her in the sense that men own slaves; she
had reserved to herself self-mastery, which called for cunning, courage
and a certain ruthlessness, albeit tempered by a reckless generosity.

She saw life skeptically, undeceived by the fawning flattery that Rome
served up to her, enjoying it as a cat likes being stroked. They said of
her that she slept with one eye open.

Livius had complained in the Thermae to Pertinax that the wine of
influence was going to Marcia's head, but he merely expressed the
opinion of one man, who would have liked to feel himself superior to her