'I must say, Faustus Fabius, my host on land is certainly more informative than the one I had at sea.' He acknowledged the comment with a thin smile and a knowing nod; I could see he had little affection for Marcus Mummius. 'Tell me,' I went on, 'just who is this Mummius?'

Fabius raised his eyebrow. 'I thought you would have known that. Mummius was one of Crassus's proteges in the civil wars; since then he's become Crassus's right-hand man in military affairs. The Mummii aren't a particularly distinguished family, but like most Roman families that survive long enough, they do possess at least one famous ancestor. Unfortunately, the fame goes hand in hand with a taint of scandal. Marcus Mummius's great-grandfather was a consul back in the days of the Gracchi; he won triumphs for his campaigns in Spain and Greece. You never heard of Mad Mummius, also known as the Barbarian?'

I shrugged. The minds of patricians are surely different from those of us ordinary men; how else can they effortlessly catalogue so much glory and gossip and scandal about so many ancestors, not just their own but everyone else's? At the least prompting they can recount picayune details of life after life, going all the way back to King Numa and beyond.

Fabius smiled. 'It's unlikely, but if the matter should happen to come up around Marcus, be careful what you say; he's surprisingly sensitive about his ancestor's reputation. Well, then: many years ago this Mad Mummius was commissioned by the Senate to put down the revolt of the Achaean League in Greece. Mummius destroyed them completely, and then systematically looted Corinth before levelling the city and enslaving the populace by senatorial decree.'

'Another glorious chapter in the history of our empire. Surely an ancestor any Roman should be proud of