Atia's kitchen slave, Althea, carries the bowl of stew for her mistress from the kitchen, stopping to steal a taste before she enters the dining room to present it. Lacking company for dinner, Atia demands to hear music, but Castor and Merula inform her that the flute girl is sick and the lyre player has died. Learning that Althea sings well, Atia demands to hear "Crown of Sappho”. The girl hesitates at first, but nervously follows orders, soon revealing a powerful, operatic voice. Just as she has everyone frozen in awe, Althea stops mid-verse, turns flush and collapses, gasping for breath. "Poison!" Merula announces, hovering over her. Castor catches a glimpse of Duro the slave boy darting out of the servant's quarters and heads after him.

Octavia and her friend Jocasta arrive home to the tortured screams of Duro. Outside by the stables, Timon is whipping and branding the boy with hot metal implements, as Atia and the other servants look on. "What have you been doing to the servants that they want to murder you?" Octavia asks her mother when she learns of the crime. Atia suspects Servilia; with Antony gone, she thinks she can do as she pleases. When she offers to spare the boy in exchange for a name, he confesses he is working for Servilia.

As Timon leads the boy down winding alleys, he begs desperately for his life and claims Servilia loves him like a son. "I expect she'll get over it," Timon responds before stabbing him.

When Timon returns home soaked in blood, his brother is outraged. "Look at what you've become — you are an animal!" Levi yells. Timon turns to his wife, Deborah, seething. "Did he tell you of his righteous life back in Judea? Eh?... Thieving, gambling, chasing whores." Deborah becomes furious with Timon.

Levi insists he's changed his ways. "All Rome's wealth is not enough to buy what Ha-Shem has given me," he tells Timon, chastising him for forgetting he is a jew. When Levi raises a fist to strike him, Timon pulls out his knife. His young son walks in to the sight of his father holding a knife to his uncle's throat, and freezes in fear.

In the Forum, the newsreader announces that a battle is imminent in the north: a "great army”, under the leadership of Generals Hirtius and Pansa, assisted by Caesar Octavian, versus "the forces of the traitor Mark Antony”. All citizens are requested to make offerings for the soldier's success.

By the time Pullo arrives in the north, there is nothing left but a smouldering battlefield of bodies and limbs piled on top of each other. Searching for Vorenus among the fallen, he's interrupted by someone calling his name. He looks up to see Caesar's standard, and under it a rider on a white horse: Octavian, all grown up, and the clear victor in the battle. Pullo is unable to conceal his astonishment that the fragile boy he once trained has won his first battle, but Octavian humbly credits the legions, the generals, and his man Agrippa. Hearing the news about Vorenus' children, Octavian points the way and gives him the Caesarian seal to help clear his path. Pullo heads straight for the hills, where Mark Antony and his wounded army have retreated.

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