Since Hylas had left Sicilia some five days ago, misfortune had dogged his every move and now the entire mess had culminated with his horse going lame still some miles from Pompeii. Sitting by the roadside, glaring helplessly at the wretched animal, Hylas could only believe the gods were punishing his hubris by ensuring that anything that could go wrong, did.

“Es ‘aidou baske!” he told the horse miserably. He was hot, tired and close to tears of frustration. He desperately wanted to bathe and couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. He almost wished he could just go back to Syracusa, but that was unthinkable of course, the punishment meted out to runaway slaves was not something he was prepared to face.

Hylas had long forgotten the taste of real freedom, and at the moment he was hating this sharp reminder. He might have been a slave, but he had been a most thoroughly pampered one. M. Aemilius Felix, retired veteran of the Judaea campaign now living in retirement on his Syracusan latifundium, had bought him from the market at Delos supposedly as a personal steward. That had been a joke. Everyone knew the only work expected of the luscious young Greek was of the bedroom variety. And that was where the problem had begun. The other slaves had resented him for it, and even Aemilius Felix’s closest friends had shaken their heads over his indulgence of this precocious and temperamental beauty. Securely cosseted by his doting master, Hylas hadn’t given a mouldy fig for anyone’s opinions- until Aemilius Felix was abruptly carried off by a fever and Hylas had found himself now the property of his master’s younger brother, along with the rest of the household effects.

C. Aemilius Pertinax was not as indulgent as his brother, and neither approved of nor shared his tastes in the bedroom. Within days of Felix’s death, he had accepted a substantial price from a local brothel-owner for the pretty Greek boy. No amount of pleas, tears or promises of good behaviour had availed Hylas, and in the end he had fled the latifundium barely hours before his new owner’s men came to collect him.

There followed two days in hiding at the squalid docks before Hylas managed to beg passage on a ship that would take him to the mainland, followed by the abject seasickness of the crossing itself. Ill-prepared for self-survival and already scared of pursuit, he had decided to try and reach Pompeii, a place of which he knew nothing practical, but did vaguely recall Aemilius Felix fondly reminiscing about. He had paid using the only currency he had – himself – to buy the sorry nag that now stood dejectedly in the middle of the dusty road, completely lame in the left foreleg.

Sighing fretfully, Hylas chewed on a fingernail as he contemplated this latest set-back and looked round to see where he was. Maybe he could walk the rest of the way to Pompeii? he thought, before reminding himself he had no idea how far it was and his sandals were pretty rather than functional. The only place he could see was a fairly large villa set a little way back from the road – he decided he would have to cast himself on the mercy of whoever lived there and hopefully get at least a cup of water before they threw him off their land.

Straightening his good, but sadly dusty and crumpled, tunic as best he could and running fingers through his black hair in an attempt to tidy himself and look as little like a runaway slave as possible, he tugged on the horse’s reins to get the reluctant beast moving. “Come on, Pegasus, let’s see who’s at home.”