Her mother was a lanky chorus dancer in a mime group I once ran into. Reckoned she couldn't look after a child. Couldn't be bothered, more like. I saved the scrap, fostered her out until she was a useful age, then taught her what I could. She was too tall for an acrobat, but luckily she turned out to be musical, so when I saw that the hydraulus was the instrument of the moment I grabbed the chance and got Sophrona trained. I paid for it, at a time when I wasn't doing so well as nowadays, so I'm annoyed at losing her.'

'Tell us what happened, Thalia?' I asked. 'How could an expert like you be so careless as to lose valuable talent from your troupe?'

'It wasn't me who lost her!' Thalia snorted. 'That fool Fronto. He was showing some prospective patrons around -Eastern visitors. He reckoned they were theatrical entrepreneurs, but they were time-wasters.'

'Just wanted a free gawp at the menagerie?'

'And at female tumblers with no clothes on. The rest of us could see we hadn't much hope of them hiring us for anything. Even if they had done it would have been all sodomy and mean tips. So nobody took much notice. It was just before the panther got loose and munched up Fronto; naturally things grew rather hectic after that. The Syrians did pay us another hopeful visit, but we pulled down the awnings. They must have left Rome, and then we realised Sophrona had gone too.'

'A man in it?'

'Oh bound to be!'

I noticed Helena smiling again as Thalia exploded with contempt. Then Helena asked, 'At least you know they were Syrian. So who were these visitors?'

'No idea. Fronto was the man in charge,' Thalia grumbled, as if she were accusing him of seedy moral habits. 'Once Fronto ended up inside the panther, all we could remember was that they spoke Greek with a very funny accent, wore stripy robes, and seemed to think somewhere called "the ten Towns" was the tops in civic life.'

'I've heard of the Decapolis,' I said. 'It's a Greek federation in central Syria. That's a long way to go looking for a musician who's done a moonlight.'