The announcer arrived, obviously disappointed to find that it was Cicero and not some grovelling client from whom he might extort a few denarii before allowing further admission to the house. From small signs — his high voice, the visible enlargement of his breasts — I realized he was a eunuch. While in the East they are an indispensable and ancient part of the social fabric, the unsexed remain a rarity in Rome and are looked on with great distaste. Cicero had said that Caecilia was a follower of Oriental cults, but to keep a eunuch in her household struck me as a truly bizarre affectation.

We followed him around the central atrium and up a flight of marble steps. The announcer pulled back a hanging curtain, and I followed Cicero into a chamber that would not have looked too out of place in a high-priced Alexandrian brothel.

We seemed to have stepped into a large and over-decorated tent, plush and pillow-strewn, with carpets and hangings everywhere. Brass lamps hung from standing braziers in the corners and exhaled trickles of smoke. It was from this room that the smell of incense permeated the house. I could hardly breathe. The various spices were being burned without the least sensitivity to their individual proportions and properties. The crude concentrations of sandalwood and myrrh were nauseating. Any Egyptian housewife would have known better..

'Mistress,' the eunuch whispered in a high voice. 'The esteemed Marcus Tullius Cicero, advocate.' He quickly withdrew.

At the far end of the room was our hostess, sprawled face down amid cushions on the floor. Two female slaves attended her, kneeling on either side. The slaves were dark-skinned and dressed in Egyptian style, wearing diaphanous gowns and heavily made-up. Above them, dominating the room, was the object before which Caecilia prostrated herself.

I had never seen anything quite like it. It was clearly an incarnation of one of the Oriental earth goddesses, Cybele or Astarte or Isis, though I had never before seen this particular permutation. The statue stood eight feet tall, so tall that the top of its head grazed the ceiling. The thing had a stern, almost manly face and wore a crown made of serpents. At first glance I assumed that the pendulous objects adorning her torso were breasts, scores and scores of them. A closer look at the curious way in which the orbs were grouped made me realize they must be testicles. In one hand the goddess held a scythe, the blade of which had been painted bright red.

'What?' A muffled voice rose from the cushions. Caecilia floundered for a moment. The slave girls each took an arm and helped her up. She spun around and looked at us in alarm.

'No, no!' she shrieked. 'That stupid eunuch! Out, out of the room, Cicero! You weren't to come inside, you were to wait outside the curtain. How could he have made such a stupid mistake? No men are allowed into the sanctum of the Goddess. Oh, dear, it's happened again. Well, by rights you should all three be sacrificed as a punishment, or at least flogged, but I suppose that's out of the question. Of course, one of you could take the place of the others — but no, I won't even ask it, I know how fond you are of young Tiro. Perhaps this other slave—' She glanced at my iron ring, the mark of a common citizen, and seeing I was no one's slave threw up her hands in disappointment. Her nails were unusually long and stained red with henna, in the Egyptian fashion.

'Oh, dear. I suppose this means I'll have to flog one of the poor slave girls in your place, just as I did when that eunuch made the same stupid mistake last week with Rufus. Oh, dear, and they're so delicate. The Goddess will be very angry….'

'I don't see how he could make the same mistake twice. Do you think he does it on purpose?' We were seated in Caecilia's reception room, a high, long hall with skylights above and open doors at either end to admit the breeze. The walls were painted in the realist fashion to reproduce a garden — green grass, trees, peacocks, and flowers on the walls, blue, sky above. The floor was green tile. The ceiling was draped with blue cloth.

'No, don't answer that. I know what you'd say, Cicero. But Ahausarus is far too valuable to be got rid of, and too delicate to punish. If only he weren't so scatterbrained.'

There were four of us seated around a small silver table set with cool water and pomegranates — Cicero, myself, Caecilia, and the young Rufus, who had arrived ahead of us but had known better than to enter Metella's sanctum, preferring to wait in the garden instead. Tiro stood a short distance behind his master's chair.

Metella was a large, florid woman. Despite her age she appeared quite robust. Whatever colour her hair might originally have been, it was now fiery red, and probably white beneath the henna. She wore it piled high on her head, wound in a tapering coil held in place by a long silver pin. The pointed tip poked through on one side; the needle's head was decorated with carnelian. She wore an expensive-looking stola and much jewellery. Her face was covered with paint and rouge. Her hair and clothing reeked of incense. In one hand she held a fan and beat the air with it, as if she were trying to disperse her scent about the table.

Rufus was also redheaded, with brown eyes, flushed cheeks, and a freckled nose. He was as young as Cicero had indicated. Indeed, he could have been no more than sixteen, for he still wore the gown that all minors wear, whether male or female — white wool fitted with long sleeves to deflect the eyes of the lustful. In a few months he would put on the toga of manhood, but for now he was still a boy by law. It was obvious that he idolized Cicero, and equally obvious that Cicero enjoyed being idolized.

Neither of the nobles showed any discomfort in accepting me at their table. Of course, they were seeking my help in a problem with which neither of them had any experience. They showed me the same deference a senator may show to a bricklayer, if the senator happens to have an archway about to collapse in his bedroom. Tiro they ignored.

Cicero cleared his throat. 'Caecilia, the day is very hot. If we have dwelt long enough on-our unfortunate intrusion into your sanctuary, perhaps we can move on to more earthly matters.'

'Of course, Cicero. You've come about poor young Sextus.'

'Yes. Gordianus here may be of some help to us in unravelling the circumstances as I prepare his defence.'

"The defence. Oh, yes. Oh, dear. I suppose they're still out there, aren't they, those awful guards. You must have noticed them.'

'I'm afraid so.'

'It's such an embarrassment. The day they arrived I told them flady I wouldn't stand for it. Of course it didn't do any good. Orders from the court, they said. If Sextus Roscius was to abide here, it would have to be under house arrest, with soldiers at every door, day and night. "Arrest?" I said, "As if he were in a prison, like a captured soldier or a runaway slave? I know the law very well, and there is no law that allows you to hold a Roman citizen in his own home, or the home of his patroness." It's always been that way; a citizen accused of a crime always has the option to make his escape if he doesn't want to face trial and he's willing to leave his property behind.

'So they sent for a deputy from the court who explained it all very smoothly — it couldn't have been smoother if it had come from your own lips, Cicero! "Right you are," he says, "except in certain cases. Certain capital cases." And what did he mean by that, I wanted to know. "Capital" he said, "as in decapitation — cases involving the removal of the head, or other vital organs, resulting in death." '

Caecilia Metella sat back and fanned herself. Her eyes became narrow and misted. Rufus leaned forwards and tenderly laid his hand upon her elbow.

'Only then did I realize how terrible it all was. Poor young Sextus, my dear friend's only surviving son, having lost his father, might now have to lose his head as well. But even worse than that! This underling, this person, this deputy, went on to explain exactly what the word capital meant in a conviction for parricide. Oh! I would never have believed it if you hadn't confirmed it yourself, Cicero, word for word. Too terrible, too terrible for words!'