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deserved respect.
    Petro crushed the ring into a useless twist. Sneering, he handed it back. The state would forego that gold.
    'You're enjoying this,' Fusculus tutted, pretending to admonish his chief. Fitted out with a sense of irony, Fusculus must be the sensitive one.
    'I enjoy knowing that I'm never going to see this bastard again.'
    'Strip him of his rights!' That was Martinus, ever eager for drama and about as sensitive as a dead newt.
    Petronius Longus folded his arms. Enjoying this he might be, but he sounded tired: 'Tiberius Balbinus Pius, you stand condemned of capital crimes. The laws of Rome grant you time to depart. That is your only prerogative. You are no longer a citizen. You no longer possess equestrian rank, nor the honours attached to that rank. Your property is forfeit to the Treasury and your accusers. Your wife, children and heirs have no future claims upon it. You shall depart beyond the Empire. You shall never return. If you set foot in any territoty governed by Rome, the penalty is death.'
    'I am innocent!' Balbinus whined.
    'You're grime!' roared Petronius. 'Get on the boat before I forget myself!'
    Balbinus shot him a vindictive look, then walked straight to the ship.

VI

    Petro and I regained the quay later that morning. We had snatched a few hours' snoring on a bench in a wine bar that was fractionally more friendly than our previous foray. While we were relaxing the scene had changed completely. It was light. The quays were full of people. After a long, nerve- racking night, the hubbub was a shock.
    As we hunted for the Providentia, which had brought me home from Syria, we could now make out fully the great man-made harbour basin. This was Portus. Claudius had first enclosed the spectacular new mooring that had replaced the old silted-up basin two miles away at Ostia. Nowadays only shallow-draught barges could use the old port. Portus had taken several decades of construction since Claudius sank the first breakwater - a massive ship once used to carry an obelisk for Caligula. That was now the base of a two-hundred-foot mole holding back the weather and carrying the three-storeyed lighthouse whose constant beacon announced from the harbour mouth that this was the centre of world navigation: one hundred and sixty acres of quiet mooring, to which all the Empire's trade came, eager to cough up harbour tax. I had paid my tax like a good citizen, one whose brother-in-law was a customs officer who liked asking unwanted questions. I was now trying to reclaim my goods.
    There was more noise than earlier. Workers were already pouring in from Ostia along the rout through the market and flower gardens, or via the Claudian canal (which badly needed widening and dredging): clerks, customs inspectors, owners of vessels and goods, all jostling on the jetties with passengers and porters. We were tired, and the scene was unfamilar. Somehow the waterfront turmoil stripped us of our normal authority. Petronius and I were battered and cursed along with every other stranger.
    'Sorry for getting you into this,' I told him ruefully. He was taking it well, however. This was by no means the wont pickle we had been in. Balbinus had put us in a gloomy mood; we were glad to forget him. We applied ourselves to commerce like heroes on behalf of my auctioneer father. He irritated all Hades out of me - but he had at least given us a chance to skive at the seaside for a time.
    My father's general habit was to cause me trouble. From the day he had run away from home when I was still in the tunic of childhood I had despised pretty well everything he did. I never dealt with him if I could help it, but he had a way of winding himself into my life however hard I tried to avoid it.
    He had known better than to ask me to help him make money from my trip to Syria. On hearing of our exotic destination he had commissioned Helena instead. Helena Justina, my girlfriend who had been brought up a senator's daughter, thought Pa was just a