Episode 12.1.b
>Alexandria, Aegyptus, 80 CE<
Tertius leads you through the streets to a great building. It is old, and not far from ruin. One side of it is black from fire, and a part of it fell long ago; the hands that rebuilt it did poor work.
At the gate a tired guard sits on a stool. Tertius speaks to him in Greek. The guard looks him over with plain suspicion, then laughs and waves you all inside, into an enormous atrium. It is built like a Roman atrium, but the Roman marks are missing. Where a lararium ought to stand there is something else: a true altar, and on it you can see old blood.
Through the doorways of the rooms that open onto the atrium you can see shelves, and on the shelves, books. Egyptian books are not like the ones you know. They are made of papyrus. In one corner a man who looks as tired as the guard sits reading.
"I told the guard your family wants to make a great gift to the Muses, through this Musaeum," Tertius says. "The place has been poor since the empire began. The fire destroyed a great many books, but the worse thing is that no one looks after it anymore. And the learned men who are here now are not the best.
"So we need to ask the librarian. We're looking for books that show the road the Lapis took after the Carthaginians captured it. If we think this through well, we can make the next TSTT training better."
Prompt: Choose a book to ask for.
