'Indeed,' said Fabius, his teeth slighdy clenched at the irony in my voice.

'And his butchery earned him the name Mad Mummius?' 'Oh, by Hercules, no. It wasn't his bloodthirstiness or his cruelty. It was the indiscriminate way he handled the works of art he shipped back to Rome. Priceless statuary arrived in pieces, filigreed urns were scarred and scraped, jewels were torn from caskets, precious glassware was shattered. They say the man couldn't tell a Polyclitus from a Polydorus!' 'Imagine that!'

'No, really! They say a Juno by Polyclitus and a Venus by Polydorus each lost her head in transit, and when Mad Mummius was having them reassembled he ordered the workmen to attach the wrong heads to the wrong statues. The error was evident to any fool with two eyes. One of the Corinthian captives, outraged by the blasphemy, advised Mad Mummius of the error, whereupon the general had the old man soundly whipped and sold to the mines. Then he ordered his men to leave the statues exactly as they were, saying he thought they looked better that way.' Fabius shook his head in disgust; to a patrician, a scandal a hundred years ago is still a scandal this morning. 'Old Mummius became known as Mad Mummius, the Barbarian, given that his sensibilities were no better than those of a Thracian or a Gaul. The family has never quite shaken off the embarrassment. A pity, since our Marcus Mummius idolized his ancestor for his military skills, and rightly so.'

'And Crassus recognizes the skills of Marcus Mummius?'

'His right hand, as I said.'

I nodded. 'And who are you, Faustus Fabius?'

I looked at him steadily, trying to pierce his feline countenance, but he rewarded my scrutiny with a bland expression that seemed to be a smile on one side and a frown on the other. 'I suppose that would make me the left hand of Crassus,' he said.

The road grew level as we gained.the summit of the ridge. Through the trees to the right I caught occasional glimpses of water below and, far away across the inlet, the clay roof-tops of Puteoli, shimmering like tiny red beads.