Minca was at liberty to run alongside the road, drinking freely from the thin watercourses which traversed the fields that lay on either side of the route. The paved roadway was busy, full of carts and wagons pulled by dull-eyed oxen, and messengers on post-horses galloped by, demanding right of way, as did the occasional official or wealthy traveller in a litter. Flaccus and his men moved in the morning and the late afternoon, resting up from the heat of the noonday sun, both horses and men sleeping in the shade. They stopped in a town for the night if they could, or at the post-houses along the way if the distance demanded it, flea-ridden establishments, with poor food and worse wine. Flaccus was careful now to pay for their needs in advance, so that any further expenses would fall on those doing the ordering. He laid out nothing on the boy, who was obliged to feed off the left-overs of other travellers and bed down in the stable with his dog and the horses. All Aquila’s attempts to engage Flaccus in conversation failed; the ex-centurion had no desire to talk of his times in the legions, nor of the exploits of Clodius Terentius, who had been at best an innocent, at worst an amiable buffoon who was always short of what he needed to get leave.
