'Yes, I remember him using those very words once, when he was making ready to leave the city for the farm.' I glanced down at the stream and then above the treetops to the roof of Publius's house, felt a vague uneasiness, then looked away and resolved to think of something else. ‘You saw Lucius often when he visited the farm?'

'Oh, I never missed seeing him whenever he came. Such a sweet man — but you know that. We would come and sit on this very ridgetop, on these very stumps, and gaze down on the farm, and make plans for the future. He was going to build a little mill house down by the stream. Did you know that?'

'No.'

'Yes, with a great waterwheel, and one set of gears for grinding meal and another set for grinding stones dug out of Gnaeus's mine. It all sounded very ambitious and complex, but Lucius thought he could design the workings himself A pity he died as he did, so suddenly.'

'Suddenly is best, I think. I've known many men who were less fortunate.'

'Yes, I suppose it would be worse to die slowly, or alone…' 'Instead, Lucius died very swiftly, with hundreds of people around — crossing the Forum, where he was known and liked by just about everyone. Laughing and joking 'with his entourage — so I was later told — when he suddenly gripped his chest and collapsed. He died almost at once; he suffered only a little. The funeral was quite an affair — so many loving friends, from all walks of life.' I smiled, remembering. 'He had put his will into the keeping of the Vestal Virgins, as many rich men do. I had no idea, until I was called to see it for myself, that he had left anything to me at all. And there it was, the deed to his Etruscan farm, together with a worn copy of Cato's On Farming. I suppose he must have heard me daydreaming from time to time about retiring to the countryside, escaping all the madness in Rome. Of course, those were only idle dreams — what man of my means could ever afford to buy a decent farm, with all the slaves necessary to run it?'