Episode 5.2.a
>The road between Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italy, 79 CE<
You go back to Sextus with no idea how to begin, the cold under that smile still on you, the question that was aimed past you at no one. You needn't have worried about the words. Sextus is at his own door before you reach it, lit up and impatient, a man who has just cracked something open and cannot wait to show you.
"The papyrus," he says. "The one from Marcus's house. Read it again, the whole thing, because I promise you it does not say now what it said the first time."
You unroll the scroll. He is right. The same lines you puzzled over for nothing now lie open and plain:
Gaius Cilnius Maecenas is writing a book. The book means a place. In that place is the Lapis. The forum of Hercules has a road. The forum of Hercules sees a door, and the door opens the road to the Lapis. I live in Pompeii. You live in the place of Hercules.
"The forum of Hercules," Sextus says, tapping the line. "The place of Hercules. It is a town, and we have been standing a few miles from it this entire time. Herculaneum. Come. The trail runs warmer there."
He takes you out across the palaestra and onto the coast road, and the difference shows itself before you have even reached the gates. Herculaneum is a wealthier town than Pompeii and does not trouble to hide it. The houses stand taller and finer. The shops along the main street are freshly painted and bright with goods, and the road underfoot is smooth, none of the deep cart-ruts that score the streets of home.
The forum, when you reach it, sits at the northern end of the town. It is smaller than the forum at Pompeii and far quieter, but every surface of it has been dressed in marble and polished stone, and it catches the light until the whole square seems to glow.
Sextus stops at the edge of it and lets out a breath. "Here we are, then. This is where you earn your keep. Somewhere in all this is a door. Find it."
Prompt: Use your knowledge of Roman culture to figure out what the papyrus you got from Marcus' house means, and what you should be looking for in the forum.
