Talbot Mundy 
Caesar Dies 

This whole business is getting too confused for me, he grumbled, sitting down again. ‘You want to kill Commodus, as is reasonable. Marcia has ordered me to kill you, which is unreasonable Yet for the present she protects you. Why? She knows you are Commodus’ enemy. She seems anxious to save Commodus. Yet she encourages Pertinax, who doesn’t want to be emperor; he only dallies with the thought because Marcia helps Cornificia to persuade him Isn’t that a confusion for you? And now there’s Bultius Livius. As I understand it, Marcia caught him spying on her. No woman in her senses would trust Livius; the man has snowbroth in his veins and slow fire in his head. Yet Marcia now heaps favors on him ‘