Wrath of the Furies

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[The fragmentary text begins in mid-sentence.]

… not even allowed me to keep my own name! Instead the king insists that I continue to use that absurd pseudonym (which he himself suggested) that I took when I agreed to fake my own death and travel the world as a spy for him. So everyone here in Ephesus knows me not as the venerable Antipater of Sidon, greatest of all living poets in the Greek language, but instead as gray-bearded Zoticus of Zeugma, itinerant tutor of wayward Roman boys and all-around nonentity. The humiliation!

But oh, how I wish that were the only humiliation I have been made to suffer, or even the worst.

I would challenge him in this matter, but I have seen what happens to those who dare to cross the Shahansha-King of Kings!-as he now styles himself in the barbaric tongue of the Persians. Part Greek the king may be, but part Persian as well-and since I joined his traveling court I have seen far too much of the barbarian and far too little of the Greek!

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