At Praeneste, for example, just over 20 miles from Rome, a vast new sanctuary of the goddess Fortune was built, a masterpiece of display architecture – with a theatre, terracing, porticoes and colonnades – to rival anything anywhere else in the Mediterranean. It is hardly a coincidence that the names of several families from this town are found among those of the Roman and Italian traders on the Aegean island of Delos, one of the biggest commercial centres at the time, and a hub of the slave trade.
