Episode 3.3.b
>Pompeii Forum, Italy, Summer 79 CE<
The forum is everything at once: the smell of fish sauce and fresh bread, the racket of two men arguing over a price three stalls away, a dog sleeping in a patch of sun in the middle of the pavement with complete indifference to everyone walking around it. The colonnaded portico runs along two sides of the square, and under its shade the merchants have spread their goods on tables and hung them from hooks and stacked them against the walls.
Four stalls draw your attention.
Near the corner, a clothing seller, a vestītor, has arranged his stock with care: tunics in undyed linen and tunics in deep red, a row of cloaks on wooden pegs, belts and sandals laid flat on a low table. He is a compact man with quick eyes who has already clocked the state of your clothes and is deciding whether to lead with the tunics or the cloaks.
Deeper under the portico, partly in shadow, a weapons smith, a faber, works at a small bench even while his wares are on display: a short sword, two daggers, a hunting spear with a new shaft, an old gladius reground to a sharp edge. The tools of his trade hang above him on the wall, and the blades on the table were made by those tools and by those hands, and he knows the difference between each one.
Out in the open sun, a gem merchant, a gemmārius, has spread a cloth of dark blue wool and arranged his pieces on it with the deliberate eye of a man who understands that how a thing is displayed is half its value: rings of bronze and silver, a few of gold, carved stones, a string of amber beads from somewhere very far north. He is perfectly still, watching the crowd the way a fisherman watches water.
And at the end of the row, in front of a wall of scroll cases, a book seller, a librārius, is himself reading, a scroll unrolled across his knees, one finger tracing a line. He does not look up when people pass. When you stop in front of his stall, he finishes the line he is on before he raises his head.
Sextus gave you twenty dēnāriī. That is enough for one purchase at full price, or two if you bargain well.
Prompt: Seek out the merchant whose goods fit your Recentius, and buy at least one item. You have twenty dēnāriī.
