My brother-in-law Mico (the plasterer) had for once been put to use. They sent him out at first light to erect a scaffold just for us in front of some unwary citizen’s private house. There was not really room for a scaffold, but when the aedile’s troops saw the entire Didius family installed on a day’s hampers, all eating squelchy melons and wearing country hats, with their noses already stuck well down their gourds of wine and their throats full of ready abuse, the troopers accepted a slice of melon each then shambled off without trying to tear the scaffold down.

Luckily, by the time I arrived the senators had passed, so the trumpets and warhorns were being carried by, their towering bell-like mouths just level with our heads. Victorina and Alia mouthed obscenities at me. The rest of the family covered their ears against the din and decided not to strain their vocal cords complaining I was late.

“Do you remember,” Victorina reminisced in a loud voice, as the blaring ranks of trumpeters reached a momentary gap, “that time at the Triumph for the Conquest of Britain when the Emperor’s elephants frightened Marcus so much he was sick?”

It had nothing to do with the elephants. I was seven. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a tray of Persian sweetmeats that were standing in the shade. All I could view of the British Triumph were other people’s legs. That whole afternoon I munched my way through three pounds of honey-fried stuffed dates, until my little lips were tender from licking off the salt and my aching belly decided to revolt. I never even saw the elephants…

Maia threw me a hat. Of all my sisters, Maia displays the most consistent good nature towards me—with the single exception of the fact that it was Maia who did me the honour of importing into our family my brother-in-law Famia. This Famia was a chariot-horse vet for the Greens—and I would have found him a specimen of crass mediocrity even if I had not inclined quite strongly to the Blues. In fact I disliked all of my sisters’ husbands, which was one reason I hated family gatherings. Being formally civil to idiots and wastrels was not my idea of a festive day. Apart from Galla’s husband, whom Galla had temporarily thrown out on a rubbish heap, these despicable characters came and went in the course of the day, and my only consolation was that their wives treated them even more poisonously than they treated me.