As he dressed me, I took the opportunity to study him more closely. That he was beautiful was obvious at a glance, and yet the closer and longer I looked the more beautiful he seemed. His perfection was almost unreal, like the famous Discus Thrower of Myron come to life; as he moved, the shifting planes of light across his face highlighted a succession of cameos, each more striking than the last. Where many youths of his age have a stumbling gait, he moved like an athlete or a dancer, without any trace of artifice. His hands were nimble, infusing every movement with an innate and unassuming grace. When he stood close to me, I felt the heat of his hands and smelled the warm sweetness of his breath.

There are rare moments when one senses not the surface of other men and women, but the very life force which animates their being, and by extension all life. I have glimpsed it in moments of passion with Bethesda, and on a few other occasions, in the presence of men or women in great extremity, in the throes of orgasm or close to death or otherwise reduced by crisis to their very essence. It is a frightening and an awesome thing to see beyond the veils of the flesh into the soul. Somehow the force of life in Apollonius was so great that it rent through those veils, or else suffused them with the perfect physical embodiment of itself. It was hard to look at him and imagine that something so alive, so perfect could ever grow old and die, much less be snuffed out in an instant merely for the aggrandizement of a politician's career.

I suddenly felt a great pity for Marcus Mummius. On the journey from Rome, aboard the Fury, I had callously remarked that he had no poetry in his soul. I had spoken rashly and in ignorance. Mummius had touched the face of Eros and been stricken; no wonder he was so desperate to save the boy from a senseless death at the hands of Crassus.

Little by little the guests emptied the house and lined the road that led away from the villa. Those who had been closest to Gelina or Lucius congregated in the courtyard to become part of the procession. The Designator, a small wizened man whom Crassus had hired and brought over from Puteoli, set about arranging the participants in their places. Eco and I, having no place in the procession, walked on ahead to find a sunny spot on the crowded tree-lined road.

At length we heard the strains of mournful music. The sound grew louder as the procession came into view. The musicians led the way, blowing on horns and flutes and shaking bronze rattles. In Rome, deference to public opinion and the ancient Law of the Twelve Tables might have restricted the number of musicians to ten, but Crassus had hired at least twice that number. Clearly, he meant to impress.

Next came the hired mourners, a coterie of women who walked with a shuffling gait, wore their hair undressed and chanted a refrain that paraphrased the playwright Naevius's famous epitaph: 'If the death of any mortal saddens hearts immortal, the gods above must this man's death bemoan…'They stared straight ahead, oblivious of the crowd; they shivered and wept until great torrents of tears streamed down their cheeks.

There was a small gap in the procession, just long enough for the plaintive song of the mourners to recede before the buffoons and mummers arrived. Eco brightened at their approach, but I inwardly groaned; there is nothing quite so embarrassing as a funeral procession marred by incompetent clowns. These, however, were quite good; even at the end of the holiday season, there is no lack of first-rate entertainers on the Cup, and the Designator had hired the best. While some of them resorted to crude but effective slapstick, drawing polite laughter from the crowd, there was one among them with a stirring voice who recited snatches of tragic poetry. Most of the standard passages used in funeral processions are familiar to me, but these words were from some fresh and unfamiliar poet of the Epicurean school:

What has death to frighten man,

If souls can die as bodies can?

When mortal frame shall be disbanded,

This lump of flesh from life unhanded,

From grief and pain we shall be free-

We shall not feel, for we shall not be.

But suppose that after meeting Fate

The soul still feels in its divided state.

What's that to us? For we are only we

While body and soul in one frame agree.

And if our atoms should revolve by chance

And our cast-off matter rejoin the dance,

What gain to us would all this bring?

This new-made man would be a new-made thing.

We, dead and gone, would play no part

In all the pleasures, nor feel the smart

Which to that new man shall accrue

Whom of our matter Time moulds anew.

Take heart then, listen and hear.

What is there left in death to fear?

After the pause of life has come between,

All's just the same had we never been.

The reciter was abruptly interrupted by one of the buffoons, who shook a finger in his face. 'What a lot of nonsense. My body, my soul, my body, my soul,' the buffoon parroted, rocking his head back and forth. 'What a lot of Epicurean nonsense! I had an Epicurean philosopher in my house once, but I kicked him out. Give me a dull-as-dishwater Stoic like that clown Dionysius any day!'

There were some warm chuckles of recognition among the crowd. I gathered this must be the Arch Mime, employed by the Designator to present a fond parody of the deceased.

'And don't think for an instant that I'll pay you even half a copper for such pathetic poetry, either,' he went on, still wagging his finger, 'nor for any of this so-called entertainment. I expect true value for my money, do you understand? True value! Money doesn't fall from the sky, you know, at least not into my hands! Into the hands of my cousin Crassus, maybe, but not mine!'

He abruptly pursed his lips and turned on his heel, clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace.

I overheard the man next to me whisper: 'He's got Licinius down to perfection!'

'Uncanny!' the man's wife agreed.

'But don't think that just because I won't pay you it's because I can't pay you,' piped the Arch Mime. 'I could! I would! Only I owe debts to seven shops in Puteoli and six in Neapolis and five in Surrentum and four in Pompeii and three in Misenum and two in Herculaneum' – the Arch Mime gasped and took a deep breath – 'plus a long-standing debt to a little grandmother who sells apples by the side of the road right here in Baiae! Once I have them all paid off, come back and try another poem, you Epicurean fool, and perhaps I'll sing another tune.'

'Another tune-' hooted the man beside me.

'Sing another tune!' said his wife, nodding and laughing appreciatively. Apparently the Arch Mime had delivered one of Lucius Licinius's pet phrases.

'Oh, I know,' he went on, crossing his arms petulantly, 'you all think I'm made of money because I live like a king, but it just isn't so. At least not yet.' He bobbed his eyebrows up and down. 'But just you wait, because I do have a plan. Oh, yes, a plan, a plan. A plan for making more money than you Baian big boys could swallow with a serving spoon. A plan, a plan. Make way for the man with a plan!' he bleated, breaking character and running to catch up with the other buffoons.

'A plan,' the man next to me murmured.

'Just as Lucius was always saying,' smiled his wife. 'Always going to get rich – tomorrow!' She sighed. 'Only this happened instead. The will of the gods-'

'-and the ways of Fortune,' the man concluded.

I remembered Sergius Orata's hints of shady dealings. A disquieting suspicion began to form in my head, then unravelled and vanished with the arrival of the waxen masks.

Lucius's branch of the Licinii family had not been without its distinguished ancestors. Their lifelike images in wax, normally displayed within his foyer, were now paraded before his funeral bier, worn by persons especially hired for the task by the Designator and dressed in the authentic costumes of the offices they had held in service to the state. Such a presentation is part of the funeral procession of every Roman noble. The masked actors walk solemnly, slowly, turning their heads from side to side so that all may see their expressionless faces, looking like the dead come to life. Thus, even in death do the noble distinguish themselves from the ignoble, the 'known' from the 'unknown', proudly flaunting their lineage to those of us in the crowd who have no ancestors, only parents and forgotten forebears.