His corpse was carried on a bier, on its double mattress, with an ivory headrest. I was one of the eight bearers, with Petronius and the other brothers-in-law — Verontius, the crooked road contractor; Mico the worst plasterer in Rome; Lollius, the constantly unfaithful boatman; Gaius Baebius, the most boring customs clerk in that far from rollicking profession. Numbers were made up by Gornia and a fellow called Clusius, some leading light in auctioneering, probably the one who hoped to scoop up most of my father’s business in the next few weeks. There were torches, as is traditional even in daytime. There were horn-players and flautists. Curiously, they all could play. To my relief, there were no hired mourners wailing and, thank Pluto, no mime artists pretending to be Pa.

The undertakers must have brought equipment and, unnoticed, had already constructed a pyre. It was three levels high. Funereal odours soon covered the hillside: not just more myrrh and cassia, but frankincense and cinnamon. No one in Rome would be able to buy banquet garlands today; we had all the flowers. High on the Janiculan, a breeze helped the flames get going after I plunged in the first torch. We stood around, as you have to for hours, waiting for the corpse to be consumed, while people with no sense reminisced about Pa. The kinder ones simply watched in silence. Much later I was to drown the ashes with wine — just a mediocre vintage; in respect for Pa, I reserved his best for drinking. Though I was still not certain how much of the organisation was my responsibility, I invited everyone to a feast in nine days’ time, after the set period of formal mourning. That encouraged them to leave. It was a good step back down to Rome and they had gathered I was not offering overnight accommodation.

They knew I had special troubles. They had all seen how, just before the undertakers opened my father’s eyes on the bier so he could see his way on to Charon’s ferry, I had clambered up and laid upon his breast the body of my one-day-old son.