‘Melissa is well. We have a townhouse in Constantinople - smaller than yours, Thalius, but it suits us well.’ He said cautiously, ‘Things seem to be better out there. In the east. There are lots of small farmers who own their own land. It’s not like here where you have whole swathes of the country owned by a few super-rich. You don’t have the same—’ He waved a hand, his soldier’s inarticulacy betraying him.

‘Gross inequality?’ Thalius finished for him sadly. ‘I know, Audax, it is ruining us all, that and the decline of education ... But you have sons. Tarcho told me all about them. Your letters always thrilled Tarcho.’

Audax smiled. ‘I called the older boy Tarcho - another soldier I think! But the younger has brains rather than brawn. He’s more like you, Thalius. We are family after all. I’m glad I named him after you.’

Thalius was thrilled. ‘It would be wonderful if you lived closer, so I could get to know him - tutor him a little, perhaps.’

‘My place has always been at the Emperor’s side.’

‘I understand.’

‘Anyhow I’m here now - here for the first Tarcho ...’

‘Yes. Poor Tarcho! Come. Walk with me.’

They moved away from the book stall and, with Audax’s broad shoulders and military insignia easily clearing a way, they walked up the stairs, through the colonnade and into the Temple. It was a relief for Thalius to reach the comparative calm beneath the Temple’s roof, but it was painful to walk.

Audax touched Thalius’s arm, offering support. ‘How do you feel?’

Thalius gasped, ‘As if that thug buried his arm in me up to the elbow.’

‘If you feel you need a doctor—’

‘I’d rather walk with you, old friend.’

Audax glanced around at the Temple. ‘I haven’t been here since I was a child, and then I was too young, or bewildered, to make sense of it. Surprisingly grand, isn’t it?’

‘You mean for a run-down province like this one? Well, so it is, but it’s lasting the years well.’ Though there was some rubbish strewn on the floor, and the dead leaves of the summer just ended, the grand old monument wasn’t in terribly bad shape. You could see where money was being spent on it by those townsfolk like Thalius himself still civic-minded enough to care: repairs to the roof tiles, refurbishment of frost-cracked pillars. ‘But it has been rededicated to Christ, as well as to the divine Claudius.’ Thalius pointed out a labarum propped up in one corner, the emblem of a soldier-Christian.

‘It is still standing,’ Audax said, ‘which is more than can be said for many pagan temples these days.’