I mention all that because as I surveyed the house on arrival I was thinking, I bet the old Via Aurelia was the way Veleda fled on her escape. The Villa Quadrumatus lacked imposing steps, though it had a white marble portico that fully made up for that, set with very tall columns on a circular centrepiece, covered by a pointed roof. Pigeons had behaved disrespectfully on the big finial. It was too high for the household slaves to get up there on ladders and clean off the revolting guano more than once a year. If the steward was safety conscious, he probably made them build a scaffold when they had to do it – which I guessed was when they held their annual party to celebrate the master's birthday and invited half the Senate for a feast at which, undoubtedly, they had a full orchestra and a troupe of comedians, and served their own vineyard's Falernian specially brought up from Campania in ten ox wagons.

You see their style: Veleda, fresh from the dark forests of Germania, had been placed where she could witness the cream of Roman society in all their insane wealth. I wondered what she made of it. In particular, what she made of it once she realised these ostentatious persons would also one day be holding a glamorous garden party with two hundred guests, to celebrate the Ovation where she would be humiliated and killed… No wonder the woman took her chance and escaped. The door porter did not fail me. He was a thin Lusitanian in a tight tunic, with a flat head and a pushy manner, who spurned me before I had spoken a word: 'Unless you are expected, you can turn around and leave.' I gazed at him. 'Sir.'

My cloak, being my smart one, hung on a big brooch with a red enamelled pattern, on one shoulder. I threw the material back over the other shoulder in a nonchalant gesture, barely tearing any threads of the cloak.