'So the Sixth carry the big rissole here, then he's handed over to you?' I smiled at Linus. `How far does this slave-driver want you to go with him?'

`All the way,' answered Petro for himself.

I shot Linus a look of sympathy, but he shrugged it off. `A lad likes to travel,' he commented. `I'll see him land the other side. At least the esteemed Petronius says I don't have to shin up rigging on the journey back.'

`Big of him! Where's the rissole going?' 'Heraclea, on the Taurica peninsula.'

I whistled. `Was that his choice?'

`Someone made a very strong suggestion,' came Petro's dry response. `Someone who does have the right to feed him to the arena lions if he fails to listen to the hint.' The Emperor.

`Someone has a sense of humour then. Even Ovid only had to go to Moesia.'

The world had shrunk since emperors sent salacious poets to cool their hexameters on the lonely shores of the Euxine Sea while other bad citizens were allowed to sail to Gaul and die rich as wine merchants. The Empire stretched far beyond Gaul nowadays. Chersonesus, Taurica, even further away on the Euxine than Ovid's bleak hole, had vivid advantages as a dump for criminals: though technically not a Roman province, we did have a trading presence all along its coast, so Balbinus could be watched – and he would know it. It was also a terrible place to be sent. If he wasn't eaten by brown bears he would die of cold or boredom, and however much money he managed to take with him, there were no luxuries to spend it on.

`It's no summer holiday for you either,' I told Linus. `You'll never get home this side of Saturnalia.'

He accepted the news cheerily. `Someone needs to make sure Balbinus doesn't nip off the ship at Tarentum.' True.