Figs were certainly available. Plutarch records the story of how Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder) used Carthaginian figs to illustrate the city's proximity to Rome:

As he ended this speech it is said that Cato shook out the folds of his toga and contrived to drop some Libyan figs on the floor of the Senate-house, and when the senators admired their size and beauty he remarked that the country which produced them was only three days’ sail from Rome.

Pliny tells the same story:

Burning with a mortal hatred to Carthage, anxious, too, for the safety of his posterity, and exclaiming at every sitting of the senate that Carthage must be destroyed, Cato one day brought with him into the Senate-house a ripe fig, the produce of that country. Exhibiting it to the assembled senators, ‘I ask you,’ said he, ‘when, do you suppose, this fruit was plucked from the tree?’ All being of opinion that it had been but lately gathered, –Know then,’ was his reply, ‘that this fig was plucked at Carthage but the day before yesterday –so near is the enemy to our walls.’ It was immediately after this occurrence that the third Punic war commenced, in which Carthage was destroyed, though Cato had breathed his last, the year after this event.

What time of year?