Episode 6.2.a
>Sextus's Villa, Pompeii, Italy, August 79 CE<
You say goodbye to Caecilius and walk over to Sextus's villa. Sextus is waiting at the door, smiling, a wax tablet ready in his hand. You wait for the world to come apart the way it always does.
Nothing happens.
Sextus turns the tablet over. He frowns. He turns it again. The smile goes out of his face.
"What is this," he says, not really to you.
He sets the tablet down and walks into the tablinum, no longer smiling. A moment later he is back, and in his hand is the gleaming medicamen he gave you the very first time, in your very first lesson.
"The tablet has always worked," he says. "Today it won't. I don't know why."
He holds the medicamen out. You take it. The world shudders, the colors slide, and Sextus's villa thins out and is gone.
>Above new Carthage, in the most ancient time<
You are standing in a cloud beside Sextus. Below you the sea opens out along a curving shore, and a new city is rising there: walls half-built, a harbor still taking shape, fresh-cut stone stacked everywhere, and among all of it the small moving figures of people at work.
"Carthage," says Sextus. "Dido's city. She is building it right now. It isn't finished, and it is already beautiful."
In another cloud, not far off, stand two goddesses. One of them you know at once: Juno. The other is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, and you understand without being told that she is Venus. Both of them are angry.
Juno speaks first. "Aeneas wandered the sea for years, Venus, and you wandered after him. Now look: he has found a city worth having. Let him build his new Troy here. Let your son live here, and let the Lapis rest here, in Carthage." She sweeps a hand down toward the land below: the walls, the harbor, the ships drawn up along the shore.
"You are wrong, Juno." Venus does not raise her voice. "My son has a fate, and Jupiter himself has spoken it. The Lapis goes to Italy. Aeneas will build his new Troy, but not here. Its name will be Rome. Empire without end, Juno. For Rome, not for you."
Juno's face darkens. Venus has nothing more to say. The two goddesses look at each other, and the cloud trembles under your feet.
>The shore of Carthage<
All at once you are standing on the shore, the wind coming in off the water. Around you the Trojans are at work, sailors and slaves together, all of them worn thin by the long voyage. Beside one of the ships a great labor is underway: an enormous stone is coming down from the deck on ropes and timbers, and the men taking its weight shout to each other with every foot it drops.
Eadem lux. idem Lapis.
Aeneas is there, watching the stone come down. He turns and sees you.
"Why are you standing here with me, young ones? You should be carrying the Lapis!"
Prompt: In accordance with your worldview, and using your knowledge of Roman culture, either aid the removal of the Lapis to the shore, or interfere with it.
