"So I need not really expect to meet any substantial exporters of Spanish olive oil?"

"Oh no!" Laeta pretended to look shocked. Someone muttered to him in an undertone; he winced, then said to me, "Well, sometimes a determined group of Baeticans manages to squeeze in; we do have some here tonight."

"So thoughtless!" another of the scroll-pushers sympathized dryly. "Somebody needs to explain to the social elite of Corduba and Gades that the Society of Baetican Olive Oil Producers can manage quite well without any members who actually hail from southern Spain!"

My query had been sheer wickedness. I knew that among the snobs of Rome-and freed slaves were of course the most snobbish people around-there was strong feeling about pushy provincials. In the Celtic faction, the Spanish had been at it far longer than the Gauls or British so they had honed their act. Since their first admission to Roman society sixty or seventy years ago, they had packed the Senate, plucked the plum salaried jobs in the equestrian ranks, conquered literary life with a galaxy of poets and rhetoricians, and now apparently their commercial tycoons were swarming everywhere too.

"Bloody Quinctius parading his retinue of clients again!" mut-

tered one of the scribes, and lips were pursed in unison sympathetically.

I'm a polite lad. To lighten the atmosphere I commented, "Their oil does seem to be high quality." I collected a smear on one finger to lick, taking it from the watercress salad. The taste was full of warmth and sunshine.

"Liquid gold!" Laeta spoke with greater respect than I anticipated from a freedman discussing commerce. Perhaps this was a pointer to the new realism under Vespasian. (The Emperor came from a middle-class family, and he at least knew exactly why commodities were important to Rome.)