‘Fascinating!’ I checked my note tablet. ‘I wonder how Aviola made his choices? Amethystus and Diomedes are a couple of old lags and won’t be surprised to be excluded. Libycus is an obvious candidate for freedom; he was the personal valet, so they had an intimate relationship. Daphnus not so, however. He’s bright, a go-getter, painfully ambitious, and may have caught Aviola’s eye as someone who deserved a chance. But he is only eighteen, and only a tray carrier. Sextus Simplicius, you must have been to the house often. Do you know Daphnus?’

Simplicius raised his heavy shoulders and looked shifty. He probably did not even know the names of his own tray carriers. Daphnus would have been a silent presence placing a drink in front of him, worthy of less notice than the drink.

‘Others won’t like him jumping the queue. Take Nicostratus, the door porter – a responsible position − he was nearly thirty, so may well have been hoping for his freedom soon. He has died of his injuries, so he won’t have to know …’

Some of Aviola’s deserving slaves had been freed in his lifetime, when they became eligible, the steward for one. Polycarpus and a few others were rewarded for past services with minor bequests.

‘Polycarpus!’ Simplicius recognised his name with enthusiasm. ‘He will be looking for a new position now my poor friend has passed on. To be truthful, I was already eyeing up the situation. There was a rumour that Mucia Lucilia wanted to kick him out and have her own steward take charge. Well, one way or the other, I am hoping to snaffle Polycarpus myself!’

There can be a scramble for good employees after a death, and apparently after a marriage, though I had met his own steward who seemed pleasant and efficient. When I asked what would happen to that man, Simplicius said cold-bloodedly that the fellow would have to accept being pushed aside and sold off. He actually joked that if he, Simplicius, was then found murdered, I would know who did it.

I replied that this would be most helpful.

I knew that four of the refugee slaves (the second porter Phaedrus, the attendant Amaranta, the musician Olympe and the philosopher Chrysodorus), plus at least one sent to Campania (the steward Onesimus), had belonged to Mucia Lucilia. I asked Simplicius if he knew anything about Mucia’s will, since Roman law did grudgingly allow a woman to dispose of her own property. He claimed to have no idea, though I screwed out details of a freedman who had acted as her official guardian before she married.

We moved on to an outline of Aviola’s bequests.