The Last Girls of Pompeii by Kathryn Lasky

Author:Kathryn Lasky [Lasky, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Let’s walk to the Forum, Julia. The sun’s not high yet This is the coolest part of the morning.” He turned to the two slaves who stood by the litter. “Lido and Servius, meet us there in one hour with the litter and then we shall go on to the port.”

As they turned onto the street, there were the usual petitioners calling out for favors. These were not the official clients who were permitted into their patron Petronius’s house, but just gangs who hoped something might be tossed in their direction. Julia and her father hurried by them. As she had been trained to do, Julia walked quickly with her eyes straight forward.

Every few feet, storekeepers came out to bid the magistrate good day and inquire if he would be purchasing from them for the next wedding. The wine merchant ran to him in the street.

“Will it be the Falernian , Flavius Cornelius Petreius?” the merchant asked using his patron’s full name as a sign of respect.

Petronius laughed. “I’m afraid so, dear fellow. I wish it on no one—two daughters’ weddings in one summer.”

The wine merchant pinched Julia’s cheek. “But a while until this little one. Don’t worry your father shall buy the wine of Falernian for your wedding too!” Julia pulled her palla tighter over her arm and heard her father cough nervously. This wedding was like a stray hungry dog that seemed to follow them everywhere. It was impossible to get away from it!

Soon they were at the Forum. “Father when will your statue be put up?” Julia asked glancing about at the statues of the dignitaries and emperors that lined the immense rectangular space.

“Soon my dear.”

“Where will it go?”

“Over there between Pliny’s and that of Eumachia, perhaps.”

“Are Eumachia and the empress Livia the only statues of women in the forum?”

“Yes, a priestess and a goddess.” But the word “goddess” was tinged with disdain. Julia knew that although her father was no Republican he looked askance at the deification of the emperors and especially the empress Livia, wife of the great Augustus. She was rumored to have been a consummate poisoner who had succeeded in poisoning two of her own sons and several grandchildren.

“Will your statue be sitting on a horse?”

Petronius laughed heartily. “Julia my dear, the very idea! I would undoubtedly fall off even as a statue. I am no general. I am a merchant, a shipbuilder. Better to put me on the deck of a bucking trireme than a horse. Come along now. I have to clear up some business details.”

The business details that Cornelius Petreius was required to attend to in the forum had nothing to do with shipbuilding. He was one of a pair of senior magistrates called duoviri to whom the maintenance of sacred and public buildings as well as the roads was entrusted.

Julia and her father mounted the steps of the building that was the center of these activities. A half dozen scribes sat behind stone desks with their styluses and wax tablets.

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