“So you are both Punic?” Drusilla says, addressing Dido and Lucius, the wealthy young man she invited for Dido to entertain. Amara suspects he may be one of Drusilla’s former lovers, but she cannot be sure.

Lucius raises an eyebrow at the question, turns to Dido and says something in a language nobody else understands. It is clearly a joke, and Dido laughs, delighted, replying to him in the same tongue. He smiles at her, pleased by whatever it is she has said. He turns back to Drusilla. “It seems so.”

“But that’s wonderful!” Drusilla claps her hands. “Such a coincidence.” Quintus who is sitting beside her, sighs and rolls his eyes. Amara would like to throw a fig at his head. She still cannot imagine why Drusilla, the most glamorous woman she has ever met, would have such an ordinary boyfriend. He must be a lot richer than she realized.

“My family are all from Carthage,” Lucius says. His accent is similar to Dido’s but not identical. Amara supposes he must be several thousand leagues above her on the social scale. “I’ve been banished to Italy to look after the business. We have a number of bases here in Campania.”

“You must miss it, being so far away,” Dido says, her expression wistful.

Lucius replies to her in Punic, and she smiles again then looks down. Amara guesses he just paid her a compliment.

“Weren’t you kidnapped?” Rufus asks Dido. “That means your sale wasn’t legal! I’m convinced yours wasn’t either,” he says to Amara. “Convinced. It’s not possible to go from being a doctor’s daughter to a slave, is it?” He looks round at everyone else. “Don’t you think?”

Amara could wince with embarrassment. Rufus is determined to turn their lives into the plot of a Plautus play, where she is, in fact, a freeborn, marriageable girl. A world where tragedy, not snobbery, is what holds them apart.

Lucius coughs politely. “Perhaps not.”

“It’s completely possible,” Quintus says lazily. “I mean all sorts of people end up as slaves, if they aren’t Roman citizens.”

Drusilla changes the subject before Rufus can object. “Would you both sing for us? Amara told me what a delightful voice you have, Dido.”

“But only if you play the harp,” Amara says.

“Oh, please do,” Dido exclaims. “I’ve been longing to hear you play.”