I stood up to stretch as best I could within the cramped quarters. I splashed my face with water and sucked in a mouthful, swished it to clean my tongue and spat it out the porthole. Eco had already set out my better tunic. While I dressed he combed my hair and then played barber. When the ship gave a tiny pitch I held my breath, but he did not nick me once.

Eco fetched bread and apples, and we fed ourselves on the deck, contemplating the view as Marcus Mummius guided the ship into the great bay which Romans have always called the Cup, likening it to a vast bowl of water with villages all about its rim. The ancient Greeks who first colonized the region called it the Bay of Neapolis, I think, after their chief settlement. My sometimes-client Cicero calls it the Bay of Luxury, with a derisive tone of voice; he himself does not own a villa there – yet.

We entered the Cup from the north, skirting the narrows between the Cape of Misenum and the small island of Procida. Directly before us, at the far side of the bay, loomed the larger island of Capri, like a craggy finger pointing skyward. The sun was high, the day was fine and clear without a touch of haze on the water. Between us and the opposite strait that separates Capri from the Promontory of Minerva the water was spangled with the multicoloured sails of fishing boats and the bigger sails of the trading ships and ferries that circle the bay, carrying goods and passengers from Surrentum and Pompeii on the south side to Neapolis and Puteoli on the north.

We rounded the headland, and the entire bay opened before us, glittering beneath the sun. At its apex, looming above the little village of Herculaneum, rose Vesuvius. The sight always impresses me. The mountain towers on the horizon like a great pyramid flattened at the top. With its fertile slopes covered by meadows and vineyards, Vesuvius presides over the Cup like a bounteous, benevolent god, an emblem of steadfastness and serenity. For a while, in the early days of slave revolt, Spartacus and his men took refuge on the higher slopes.