He noticed that at the entrance to the houses on small chairs sat caretakers from retired military, in the past options39 or decurions.40 They collected rent for the owners, kept order. Usually these former fighters played with weighty sticks in their hands and looked unkindly at passers-by. But today they were disassembled by fun, and they did not look like sullen supervisors.
Noticing Marcus, one of these caretakers rose from his chair, and scornfully ignored the massive, clumsy Antiochus, who had warily stepped from behind the young patrician, saying, smiling:
“Dominus, does a woman want to.”
“Do prostitutes work during the day?” Marcus wondered, having heard about the experience of adult buddies.
“They always work, young dominus,” replied the caretaker, continuing to smile unpleasantly.
“Or maybe so I celebrate my new age?” returned to Marcus bold thoughts, which arose when he looked at the girls and women singing in the streets, at their pink cheeks and cheerful eyes, at their alluring bodies.
“We're going to the Libera sanctuary,” Antiochus interjected. In the cool air his voice sounded cracked, revealing a Greek accent. “The dominus doesn't have time now.”
“I think it will be up to the young master himself,” the caretaker said brazenly.
As he spoke, a mature, kind woman with fiery red-painted hair, a typical lupa,41 peeked out of the entrance of the insulae. Prostitutes were often painted in such defiantly bright colors, walked red or blue-headed.
“You have a place in the Lupanar,” Antiochus observed, “you violate the law of Augustus, which prohibits the accepting of customers at home.”
“What are you, the lictor? Something unnoticed by your fasces,”42 echidna throws a woman, quickly looking around Marcus. “Augustus has long been a god, and the gods do not always descend to such little things. Oh, what a lovely boy! Come on, come on with me!” she invited Marcus.
But words were not limited. She grabbed it, and Marcus unwittingly noticed her old skin, dirty nails on her hands, felt the unpleasant smell of an unwashed body. He became disgusted, the desire to go did not arise, but the legs themselves obediently led after the woman on shabby wooden stairs, on the floors, at the ends of which there are large vats for sewage. Residents poured their excrement there every morning. This smell was disgusting, sickening, but Marcus, as if fascinated by something, went after the old prostitute. Behind puffed heavy Antiochus.