The Master of the Senate, Plautus Bonosus, recalls the events of the Victory Riot two years prior, when Lysippus the Calysian, Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, was taxing the people heavily. As a result, 80,000 Hippodrome spectators rioted. Safely sequestered in a palace, Emperor Valerius II considered his options: flee to relatively assured safety but risk being unable to reclaim his throne, or stay and fight for his throne, risking his death. The men in the room were silent with fear, but Empress Alixana made the choice a simple one, inviting her husband to make the bolder choice, saying, “I would sooner die clothed in porphyry in this palace than of old age in any place of exile on earth. All Jad’s children are born to die. The vestments of the Empire are seemly for a shroud, my lord. Are they not?” (222). Bonosus recalls that the looks the two exchanged were full of more intimacy, love, and admiration than any he had shared in his own life.

In the current time, five young men are drinking at a caupona near the Hippodrome, the Spina. One, Cleander, is trying to drown his sorrows after a dancer has spurned his latest gift, taking up with Leontes’ secretary, Pertennius, instead.