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honour the local gods – the field-spirits, the guardians of the boundaries, the nymphs and dryads and gods of the spring – he cancelled, saying, when I asked him, that too much time was spent on superstitious foolery when there was a farm to run. He employed the men to work; if they would not, he would find others.
    I listened as he discoursed on such things and said nothing, not out of fear of him, for I felt none, but because I knew no words of mine would sway him, and because the farmhands, whatever he said, would no more ignore the gods of the place than they would cease to breathe the air. The sacred spirits were as real to them as the trees and streams.
    Quickly enough I began to understand that to Caecilius everything was merely a question of good or bad business. He talked of it with reverence, as a philosopher might talk of truth. He had a conception in his head, and expected the world to conform to it. Yet I never quite understood what it was that he did. When I asked him, he told me he traded; or, at other times, that he bought and later sold, and knowing how and when and where was the key. He was fortunate, he said, for he had a nose for a good deal. This was a favourite saying of his, and he would tap his nose with his finger, and peer at me with his small eyes as if he were imparting to me something of great significance.
    Despite his vagueness, I soon came to understand, though, that he had profited, in ways he never quite explained, from the war against Carthage, which at that time was nearing its end. I had lived with the war since my first breath. But now, little by little, town by town, our great general Scipio was at last driving Hannibal out of Italy. I think Caecilius was the only person who spoke of the war’s end with regret.
    Though my father had distrusted the city, he had always talked of sending me to Rome when I was old enough, to be educated by one of the new professors from Greece, who were setting up schools in the city. At the time I did not like the idea of leaving home, and had asked him, if he did not care for the city, why he wanted to send me there. To this he had answered that the city was one thing, and knowledge was another. It was not for him to withhold knowledge from me, without which there could be no wisdom. I must make my own choices, and to do that I must know something of the world and what wise men said about it. Besides, he had said, it did a man good to know the life of the city, even if he later rejected it.
    But Caecilius had no time for such things. ‘What is it you want to know?’ he would say, and when I could not answer he would wag his fat finger and say, ‘There! If you cannot tell me, then you have no need of it. Better to learn business than waste your time – and my money – on those talking heads in Rome.’
    So Rome was forgotten.
    It was soon after this, one hot day in high summer, when I was working with a group of farmhands in the orchard, that the swineherd came running from the house.
    He was a hulking boy called Milo, rather simple, who had a habit of blurting out whatever came into his head, however indiscreet.
    Usually he made the others laugh with his observations, but now he came bounding down the terraces to where I was standing halfway up a ladder and cried at the top of his voice, ‘Marcus, sir, you must do something: he is sending old Postumus away!’
    I climbed down from the ladder and set aside my basket, and told Milo to sit down and tell me all he had heard. He spilled out his words in his usual rambling way and I listened, though I scarcely needed to, for I had guessed already. But at least the pause allowed me to master my rising anger. Postumus was the oldest of the hands on our farm. He had grown slow of late, and forgetful, and already I had had to intervene with Caecilius, who thought him inefficient and a waste of money, though Postumus was old enough to be his father.
    I heard Milo out, then left him in the orchard and went