I
THE BRAGGART’S DREAM
203 CE
It was a new year. Janus’ door had only just opened onto a fresh array of opportunities there for the taking. In the dim winter light of that new day, when marble was more grey than white, and the sky a paler blue than Thracian eyes, the streets of Ephesus were unusually quiet. The revels of the long night had only just recently faded, and masters and slaves alike dozed in wine-soaked slumber wherever - and with whomever - they had fallen.
In a richly-adorned domus on the hill above the great theatre, the scent of eastern incense and Gaulish wine still lingered in the air and pooled upon the mosaic floors of every room where bodies lay in tangled heaps, as if in the aftermath of a great battle. It was in one such room that the company of actors from the pr
