She was scared, tiny and pretty. She looked her age, around fifteen, though she had more bust than Daphnus had suggested; she held herself in with a band. Her main instrument was the lyre, though she told me she could play the double flute passably. Mucia Lucilia had once heard her performing among a band of travelling entertainers, Olympe’s relatives, and offered to buy her. She had not been a slave before, but was sold into bondage by her family. It happens. I had once lived among people who were planning to do that to me.

Olympe had convinced herself that one day her relatives would be in funds and come to look for her. So she was dimmer than she looked, because I guessed they never would.

‘Don’t bank on it. You have a marketable skill, girl. Use that to make something of your life.’

Like Chrysodorus she was an exotic acquisition, though unlike him her mistress did frequently call on her skills. Olympe had played and sung at the feast. Afterwards she was tired, she claimed. She closeted herself with Amaranta in one of the good bedrooms. She heard nothing, though if she had, she would not have known what to do.

‘You could have yelled, Olympe. Called for other people to help.’

‘But I never knew I needed to.’

The robbers must have passed right outside the room where Olympe and Amaranta were asleep; that thought reduced her to helpless trembling. Olympe was the first of the accused slaves to show fear. She cried. She rushed across the room and clung to me. She begged me to help. She was terrified of facing trial (such as it would be; I didn’t disillusion her) and of the fate that a conviction would bring.

I was calming her when Manlius Faustus put his head around the door. He signalled that he would not disturb me; I mimed back that I had nearly finished. It had been a long session. He must have seen I was tiring; he sent in some basic refreshments.

What I liked about this aedile was that, having commissioned me, he made no attempt to muscle in on my interviews but left me to continue in my own style.

I next saw Amaranta, a neat, sad girl with many plaits and ribbons. Like Olympe, she was conscious of the threatening situation, though bore it with quiet resignation. I would not have classed her as a beauty, but she had enough vivacity to appeal to lustful male slaves. She possessed the manner of a very clever waiting-maid, and I reckoned she could deal with men.