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she is still one of the most striking people Amara has ever seen. Not that this is why Titus chose her. The emperor loves Berenice for the same reason her enemies hate her: she is a powerful woman, of formidable intelligence, unafraid to speak her mind.
My darling, be proud of the things others despise. Who cares that you were once a whore and I a slave? Look where we are standing now.
it is impossible for a woman to have been enslaved and to have lived virtuously.
Demetrius had a hand in planning Vespasian’s infamous tax on urine, which earned the late emperor the undying hatred of tanners and laundrymen and everyone else who needs it for business.
This is how i learn that ancient rome traded piss as a valued good?
A life of service carries a cost that those who are free cannot imagine.
With the sword he struck, with the sword he paid.
“No shame in not knowing,” Pliny says, mildly. “Better to admit one’s ignorance and learn. Always.”
“Overcoming fear is indeed the battle we all face, every day. Not only in war.” Pliny waves a forkful of eel for emphasis. “Imagine all the great feats unaccomplished due to fear, the lives only half-lived. Courage is the truest mark of a man.” He glances affectionately at his sister. “Of a woman too.”
“Shared danger is the strongest of bonds.” —Livy, History of Rome
I thought I loved you, but all I did was risk your life and threaten your future.
“You want to stop a snake biting? Cut off the head.”
Drusilla, like Amara, like Britannica, is one of life’s born survivors. A woman who understands that being nice will not get you very far in a world that is anything but.
“How about reflecting that the person you call your slave traces his origin back to the same stock as yourself, has the same good sky above him, breathes as you do, lives as you do, dies as you do?” —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Perhaps nothing marks the passage of time as inexorably as the loss of love.
“Fear is like an enemy you see on the road. You raise your hand to him, you greet him, and you continue on your way.”
It feels impossible to explain what the loss of Britannica means to her, that what she feels is not only grief but despair. Britannica’s strength, her courage, the ways in which she was always so vividly and fearlessly alive—all these qualities made Amara feel that anything she suffered could be overcome, if only she too fought hard enough. Britannica’s death is the death of hope.
It is her favorite, but also one of the few pieces she bought for herself, which means she knows the price, and Amara has always placed survival over sentimentality.
The loss of Britannica, of Pliny, of perhaps all her dearest friends, is a pain Amara cannot imagine learning to bear alone.
Ok i'm not giving up on brittanica. like she's a bad bitch she is not going to be dead
Just surviving is enough for today. Let’s not look further ahead than we have to.”
It is as if none of the people she knows ever even existed.
“Julia always said you were the most determined woman she had ever met. That you had the tenacity of a wolf, and would make a success out of anything, however unlikely. So live your life, my darling. And don’t prove her wrong.”
Mortality sits on her doorstep and Fortuna will turn her wheel, whatever plans Amara makes. Today, she has her family, she has love and she has a living. May this be enough.
And the moment Kallias walked into their store, she recognized him. He is Menander, her first love, the potter’s slave, who she once left for Rufus.
Omg love the happy ending for him. He was my favorite
she will live the life Amara’s own parents intended for their daughter, staying in her hometown, marrying into a respectable family, never encountering anyone as brutal as Felix or as intelligent as Pliny. Nor will she meet a woman as unique or forceful as Julia, her namesake clutched in Fidelia’s hand, still loved.
“And when you are dead, you are nothing.”
“I am Timarete, daughter of Timaios, blessed by Pallas-Athene, patron goddess of Attica. You will not haunt me, Felix. I have granted you safe passage to the underworld.” She stops as tears well again in her eyes. “I do this out of respect for your wife Victoria, whose heart you broke and whose love you never deserved.”
“Fortune favors the brave” —Words spoken by Pliny the Elder, on his rescue mission during the eruption of Vesuvius
Anger burns in her chest. She sends up a familiar curse to Andraste the Indestructible, asking the goddess to destroy the men who killed her family and enslaved her. May their bones already rot unmourned.
Her opponent turns his head, rolling his eyes at one of his watching fellows, laughing, and it is there that Senovara sees his greatest weakness. The man’s disdain for her. It is the gift she has been given so many times before. Her opponent’s defeat is written in the lack of effort he has put into studying her movements, and in his complacency she sees her own victory, if she only strikes hard enough, and fast enough.
This is not where it ends.
