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room possessed flimsy folding doors which I forced with an edging tile from a flowerbed, while the senator's secretary watched. He was a thin Greek slave with a hooked nose and the air of superiority with which Greek secretaries are embalmed at birth. I dictated instructions at length.
    I decided I enjoyed dictating. I also enjoyed the look on the Greek's face when I grinned goodbye, clambered onto a sundial, found a toehold on a knot of ivy, and hoisted myself up the sheer dividing wall to see about the house next door.
    "Who lives there?"
    The master's younger brother."
    As a younger brother myself I noted with pleasure that Camillus junior had sense. He had fixed up every window with solid slatted shutters, all painted in dark malachite green. Both houses had been faced in standard lava blocks, with their upper floors supported on skinny pillars hewn from a very ordinary grey stone. The architect had been lavish with his shaped terra cotta gable ends, but by the time he came to stock the grounds with the customary statues of graceful nymphs in their underwear, his contingency funds ran out. The gardens were furnished with meagre sticks of trellis, though their plants burgeoned with health. It was the same building contract on both sides of the wall. Hard to say why the senator's house bore an approachable, easygoing smile while his brother's felt formal and cold. I was glad Sosia lived in the house with the smile.
    I gazed at the brother's house for a long time, not quite sure what I was looking for. Then, with a wave to the Greek, I walked along the top of the divider to the far end. I jumped nonchalantly off.
    I got covered in dust and twisted my knee, landing in the alley behind the senator's garden wall. Hercules knows why I did it, there was an entry for delivery carts with a perfectly good gate.

VII

    As I walked towards home the streets became more clamorous, with traders' cries, hoofbeats and harness bells. A small black dog, his fur clinging in spiked clumps, barked madly at me as I passed a baker's shop. When I turned back to swear at him, my head bonked against a sequence of jugs that had been hung on a rope by a potter whose idea of advertisement was to show his work could take a bashing; luckily my head was also strong. In the Ostia Road I was buffeted by bodkin sellers and footmen in crimson livery, but I managed to get my own back by squashing the toes of several slaves. Three streets from home I glimpsed my mother buying artichokes with the purse-lipped look that means she is thinking about me. I ducked behind some barrels of winkles and then backtracked to avoid finding out whether this was true. She did not appear to have seen me. Things were going well: friends with a senator, open-ended contract, and best of all, Sosia.
    I was brought up sharp from this reverie by two bullyboys whose greeting made me grunt with pain.
    "Whoops!" (cried I). "Look lads, it's all been a mistake. Tell Smaractus my rent's with his accountant' I failed to recognize either, but Smaractus rarely keeps his gladiators long. If they can't run away they inevitably die in the ring. If they don't make it that far they perish from starvation, since Smaractus' idea of a training diet is a handful of pale yellow lentils in lashings of old bathwater. I assumed these were my landlord's latest bruisers from the gym.
    My assumption was awry. By now my head was being gripped under the first bully boy elbow. The second put his face down to grin at me; I had a sideways view of the cheek guards of the latest design of helmet and a familiar scarlet neckerchief under his chin. These beggars were army. I considered coming the old soldier but in view of my legion's record, a dropout from the Second Augusta was unlikely to impress.
    "Guilty conscience?" (cried the sideways face). "Something else to worry you Didius Falco, you're under arrest!"
    Arrest by the boys in red felt familiar, like being tickled for cash by Smaractus. The biggest of these two