To Bring the Light

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Flavia Herosilla leaned on the bronze balcony railing and craned forward to get a better look at the placard which the wagon-driver’s attendant held over the snarling tigers. “Egypt?” she read aloud. “That’s nonsense! There aren’t any tigers in Egypt! If the emperor doesn’t have better generals than he has geographers, Rome won’t last another thousand days, much less years.”

“Well, I suppose they’re talking about the port of entry on the Red Sea, then down the Nile and by ship to Rome,” said her host, Gnaeus Julius Maternus. “India isn’t part of the Empire.”

Herosilla snorted. “Neither is Dacia, not really,” she said. “But there’s supposed to be a Dacian display coming later in the day.”

Maternus had extensive shipping interests which paid (among other things) for this mansion on the Palatine Hill. The high balcony, facing the Sacred Way with the Forum on the left, was the perfect location from which to watch the parades Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus—Philip the Arab—was giving to mark the Thousandth Anniversary of the founding of Rome.

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