THE PRAETOR WAS in a hurry, as usual, but Rome was Rome, and the crowds saw too many magistrates to be that impressed by the pomp surrounding one. His lictors did their best, threatening when their mere approach was not enough to make people clear a path, and steadily they made progress, acquiring the inevitable tail of boys and idlers hoping to watch a few arguments or perhaps even a fight. The Flavian amphitheatre towered over them, quiet today – or at least as quiet as anywhere could be when it was surrounded with hawkers and stall holders. Rome was never quiet during the daylight hours and not much better at night, although after yesterday’s Lupercalia by rights everyone ought to have been subdued, if they were awake at all.

They pushed their way through, and as they began to climb the slope of the Caelian hill the crowd changed, thinning a little, and more and more of them obviously the slaves and freedmen of the wealthy going about their duties. Litters stopped to make way for them, as was fitting for the symbols of a magistrate, their occupants hailing the praetor with greetings and invitations.

‘Will you dine with me, Aelius?’, ‘May I call on you, praetor?’, ‘Best wishes to you, my lord, and to your good lady.’

Some of the passengers were women, and some of what they said was barely audible, since no fine lady should shout in the streets. Twice words were unnecessary, and the obvious longing of one mature woman and the giggles of a younger one made clear that there was more than respect for rank and family. Each of the women was a senator’s wife, and all the lictors knew their master’s reputation there. The praetor could be very charming when he wanted, was a good height, athletic and with dark, soulful eyes. His neat beard was not fashionable for a man of rank, and had not been for centuries, but that was a sign of his immense self-confidence, pronounced even for a senator. He had celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday last month, was approaching his prime, and for a bored or neglected wife he can only have seemed a dashing figure. They dreamed of love, and he learned about their husbands, filing the information away in case it one day was useful. None of the lictors knew whether these stories were true, but they had seen his prodigious memory and the interest he took in individuals. On the first morning the praetor addressed each one by his name, whereas some magistrates never got very far past ‘Hey, you!’ in their twelve months of office.

The castra peregrina lay in the Second Region of the city, joining onto the old walls. Few magistrates came this way, let alone visited the ‘camp of the foreigners’, which was smaller and less impressive than the barracks of the praetorians, or the new ones that Trajan was having built for his cavalry bodyguard, the singulares Augusti. This camp was more of a mansio on a grand scale than anything else. It was the base of the frumentarii, centurions and other ranks from the legions on attachment from their units with the staffs of provincial governors. They helped supervise the provision of grain for men and animals, as well as other foods and material to the army, especially when these could not be found in adequate quality and quantity from local sources. These days much of their time was spent carrying messages and reports from governors back to the emperor and then from the emperor to the governors. There were usually a couple of hundred at the camp, drawn from the thirty legions dotted around the world, hence the talk of ‘foreigners’. These were a mix of men lately arrived, those waiting to travel back to a province and sufficient others to ensure that there was never any shortage of messengers at a time of emergency.