Marcella was more the mother that you imagined – definitely not the mother I grew up with. My mother was the perfect mother for sons destined for military command. In the first Hun war, after my brothers had been killed and I had been subsequently commissioned into Sulla’s X Legion as a junior Tribune, my mother had sent a letter: ‘The honor of the family rests fully on your shoulders alone.’ That was all it said – obviously in her hand, but no signature – just sealed with the Tribune’s Seal that had belonged to my father. Behind every great man stands a strong woman might be a cliché to some but my mother had been no cliché – she was the archetype.