Domitia by Sabine Baring-Gould — Read

Lucius and Domitia stepped out of the boat; he moored it to the side, and they walked together to the little temple. This was not one to which a college of priests was attached, nor even an ediculum, with a guardian who had charge of it, to open it on special festivals; it had been erected by the father of Corbulo in deference to the wish of his wife, who had taken it into her head to become a votary of Isis, this having become a fashionable cult. But on her death the doors had been closed, and it had fallen into neglect, till the return of Longa Duilia from the East with the Chaldee Magus from Antioch. It was now fashionable to dabble in sorcery, and a distinguished lady liked to be able to talk of her Magus, to seek his advice, and, at table, air a superficial familiarity with the stars, and the Powers and Æons, the endless genealogies of emanations from the primeval and eternal Light.

Longa had engaged the Magus when at Antioch, but when somewhat summarily sent to Europe by her husband, she had not taken her Chaldean magician with her. As, however, she had no wish to appear in Rome without him, she had laid it on her husband when he returned to bring the man with him, and if he did not return himself, to despatch the Magus to her.