The piazza was awash with priests; crammed with bankers and commodity brokers; flush with would-be pickpockets and the loitering sidekicks to whom they would swiftly pass whatever they stole. I looked in vain for the vigiles. (I was not intending to point out the pickpockets, only to demand loudly that the officers of the law should arrest the brokers for usury and the priests for telling lies. I felt satirical; setting the vigiles a task even they would shrink from would be an amusing way to rejoin public life.)

The messenger had left no directions. Silius Italicus was a grand type who expected everyone to know where he lived and what his daily habits were. He was not in court. Hardly surprising. He had had one case this year. If the convicted Metellus had paid up, Silius could have avoided work for another decade. I frustrated myself for a long time at the Basilica Julia, discovering that he was also the type whose home address was closely guarded, to stop lowly bastards from bothering the great bird in his own nest. Unlike me, he did not allow clients to call around at his apartment while he was dining with his friends, screwing his wife, or sleeping off either of those activities. Eventually I was informed that in daylight hours Silius could generally be found taking refreshments in one of the porticoes of the Basilica Paulli.

Cursing, I barged through the crowds, hopped down the steps and marched across the roasting travertine. At the twelve-sided well called the Pool of Curtius, I deliberately refrained from chucking in a copper for good luck. Amid the multicoloured marbles of the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius on the opposite basilica I expected a long search, but I soon spotted Silius, a lump who looked as if he made greedy use of the money he earned from his high-profile cases.