Catus took notice of the intimate scene between them, and thought of his own father, how such a scene as that had never once, in all his youth, ever played out. “He loves his son, doesn’t he?” Catus said.
“He would die for him, verily,” Bacchus said. “In fact, Giles Amadea would die for any member of his family. They hold this community together, look you!”
Bacchus nodded in the direction of the ground-floor apartment, the largest in the tenement, but by far not the richest of the Suburra, if ‘rich’ were a word one could use in that wasteland of Rome. From out of the door, came Marcia Amadea, Giles’ wife, and her three daughters, the twins Calida and Callula, and their eldest, Diana. Each of them carried humble wooden platters covered in small mushroom pies, nearly-limp greens, bread, ch
