“First,” said Epaphroditus, “let me say that obtaining this statue was not easy. The new amphitheatre has claimed the best available work of every sculptor from the Pillars of Hercules to Lake Maotis. Count all those niches and archways in the amphitheatre facade, and imagine a statue in every available spot – that’s a great many statues. But this is the one I wanted, and I got it. I won’t tell you how much I paid for it, but when you see it, I think you’ll agree it was worth whatever I paid, and more.”

“Please, keep us in suspense no longer!” Martial laughed. “Let us see this masterpiece in marble.”

Epaphroditus nodded to two slaves waiting nearby. They pulled the billowing canvas up and away from the statue.

“Extraordinary!” whispered Epictetus.

“Splendid!” said Martial.

“Do you recognize the subject?” asked Epaphroditus.

“It’s Melancomas, of course,” said Dio. “Was it done from life?”

“Yes. Melancomas modeled for the sculptor just a few months before he died. This is the original, not a copy. The hands that molded this marble were guided by eyes that beheld Melancomas in the flesh. The statue and the man himself occupied the same room in the same moment. The painting was also done from life, so the delicate colours of the flesh and the hair are as accurate as possible. What you see before you may be the most true-to-life image of Melancomas that exists. You can understand why I was so excited to obtain this piece.”

During his brief but remarkable career, the Greek boxer Melancomas had become the most famous athlete in the world. The life-size statue depicted a naked youth with his broad shoulders thrown back, his brawny chest lifted, and one muscular leg firmly planted before the other. His shapely arms were extended before him. Wavy blond tresses framed his strikingly handsome face, which expressed serene concentration as he used one hand to wind a leather strap around the other. The statue was so realistically rendered and coloured that it seemed almost to breathe. Epaphroditus had chosen to install it not on a pedestal but at ground level, so that instead of looming above them, Melancomas seemed to be standing among them. The effect was uncanny.

Melancomas had become famous for his unique fighting technique: he hardly touched his opponents, and on a few occasions won matches without landing a single blow. Using remarkable dexterity and stamina, he could duck punches and dance around his opponents until they fell from exhaustion. His bouts became legendary. Men came from great distances to see him compete. There had never been another boxer like him.

An equal claim to fame had been his extraordinary beauty. Some said that Melancomas’s face was the reason why so few blows were ever landed against him: seeing such perfection, no man had the heart to spoil it. Five years ago, when Titus, then thirty-three, presided at the Augustan Games in Neapolis, he took Melancomas for a lover. When the boxer died suddenly and unexpectedly, Titus had grieved, and so had many others.

“You wrote an elegy for Melancomas, did you not, Dio?” said Epaphroditus.

The sophist needed no further encouragement to quote from his work. He rose from his chair and stood before the statue. “‘When Melancomas was naked, nobody would look at anything else; the human eye was drawn to his perfection as iron is drawn to the lodestone. When we count the vast number of his admirers, and when we consider that there have been many famous men and many beautiful men, but none was ever more famous for being beautiful, then we see that Melancomas was blessed with a beauty that we may truly call divine.’”

Dio inclined his head. The others rewarded him with applause. “I saw Melancomas myself on a few occasions,” he went on. “Truly, the statue does him justice. What a dazzling throwback he was; what a splendid anachronism!”

“Why do you say that?” said Lucius.

“Because nowadays, the ideal of male beauty has become so very confused. I blame the Persians and their influence. Just as they gave the world astrology, which has found its way into every corner of our culture, so they introduced to us an ideal of male beauty very different from that handed down to us by our ancestors.

“Melancomas embodies the old ideal. As long as there are young men like him, we are reminded of that perfection which the old Greeks quite literally put on a pedestal, capturing it in stone for the world, and for their descendants, to witness and aspire to. They believed that nothing in the world was more beautiful than the physical splendour of the masculine form, which found its most sublime embodiment in the young athlete: a runner’s legs and backside, arms fit to throw a discus, a lean and well-proportioned torso, a face that radiates calm intelligence and the potential for wisdom. Such a youth is a model for other youths to aspire to; he is a worthy protege to whom older men are drawn because he offers such great hope for the future.

“The ideal offered by the Persian is quite different. They find women more beautiful than men, and as a result they think the most beautiful young men are those who look most like girls. They find beauty in pliable eunuchs and boys with slender limbs and soft bottoms. More and more you see this taste for feminine beauty embraced by the Greeks and Romans. As a result, fewer and fewer young men aspire to the old ideal; instead of hardening their muscles with exercise, they pluck their eyebrows and put on cosmetics. So a specimen like Melancomas – a youth whose splendour can be compared to the most famous of the old statues – stands out all the more. He is the exception that proves the rule: our standard of male beauty now, sadly, is the Persian standard.”

“And to think, Titus actually had the fellow,” said Martial, gazing at the statue over the brim of his cup and pursing his lips. “No wonder my dear patron was so heartbroken when the young man died. Frankly, I’d settle for a boy one-tenth as pretty as Melancomas – if the boy would simply show up!”

“Have you been stood up again, Martial?” Lucius smiled. This was the poet’s perennial complaint.

“Yes, again! And this boy was so promising. Lygdus, his name was. He picked the place, he picked the time… and never appeared. I was abandoned, but not seduced – left to consort with my left hand yet again.”

The others laughed. No matter how abstruse or rarefied the arguments put forward by the philosophers, Martial could be always counted on to bring the conversation back down to earth.

“But can a boy be too beautiful?” asked Dio. “Can beauty pose a danger to its possessor, especially the Persian style of beauty?”

“What sort of danger?” said Martial.

“I’m thinking of writing a discourse on the question, using as my subject the eunuch whom Nero married. Sporus, he was called. His story fascinates me. You knew Sporus, didn’t you, Epaphroditus?”

“Yes,” said Epaphroditus quietly. “So did Lucius. Epictetus also knew her.” The three of them exchanged thoughtful glances.

“Good. Perhaps the three of you can give me further details to advance my argument. Everybody knows Nero castrated the youth and took him for a wife precisely because of the boy’s resemblance to the beautiful Poppaea. Nero dressed Sporus in Poppaea’s clothing, made hairdressers style his hair in the fashion of the day, and surrounded the boy with female attendants, just as if he were a woman. Otho was drawn to Sporus for the same reason, his resemblance to Poppaea. And then came Vitellius, who drove the poor eunuch to suicide out of a desire to exploit the boy’s beauty for his own depraved amusement. What a strange and finally tragic path the boy’s life took, all because of his resemblance to a beautiful woman. Had the boy been plain, or had he been beautiful in the manner of Melancomas, one imagines his life would have been very different.”