‘Well, there may be some truth in what you say, Claudia, but you can't say that I miss the city. I couldn't wait to leave it! It's all right for younger men, or those who are driven by their vices — there is no place like Rome for a man to satisfy his ambition for power or his lust or greed, or to die in the pursuit. No, I've turned, my back on all that. The fact that Lucius died and left me this farm was the will of the gods, smiling on me, showing me a way out Rome has become unlivable — filthy, overcrowded, noisy, and violent. Only a madman could go on living there!' 'But your work—'

'I miss that least of all! Do you know what I did for a living? I called myself a Finder. Advocates hired me to find proof of their enemy's crimes. Politicians — may I never see another! — hired me to uncover scandal about their adversaries. I once thought that I served truth, and through truth, justice, but truth and justice are meaningless words in Rome. They might as well be obliterated from the Latin tongue. I discover a man is guilty of some heinous crime, only to see him acquitted by a bribed panel of judges! I learn that a man is innocent, then see him convicted on spurious evidence and hounded out of the city! I discover that the scandal attached to a powerful man is true enough, but for all that he is a sound and honest man who has only the same failings as other mem even so, the scandal is all that anyone cares about, and he is expelled from the Senate, and the true reason is some political manoeuvring by his enemies, whose true agenda I can only guess at. Meanwhile a total scoundrel charms the mob and bribes their leaders and gets himself elected consul! I used to think that Rome was growing worse and worse, but it was I who changed. I've grown too old and weary to stomach such beastliness any longer.'