Amara obliges him, turning her back on Pompeii. A group of slaves are huddled on deck in front of her, guarding their luggage. She raises her eyes to the sky, watching the gulls wheel high above them. In spite of herself, something in her spirits lifts. She has left behind her daughter, her lover, her heart. But she is alive; she is unafraid. And she is traveling to Rome, the most powerful city in the world.

AFTERWORD

Slavery in Pompeii

Sometimes a story is contained in a single sentence. Petronius wrote just such a line in The Satyricon: “I bought my wife’s freedom so nobody could wipe his dirty hands on her hair.”

The first time I read this remark, written nearly two thousand years ago, it made me do a double take. The words paint a vivid picture of slavery in the ancient world—the degradation of being used as an object, the pain of witnessing the person you love being abused, and the laborious, costly process of liberation. Yet you can also read it as a love story. A tale of how human beings assert their dignity, and their loyalty toward one another, in the face of hardship and humiliation. This is the story I wanted to write about Amara and Philos.

There are few places that hold more traces of the lives of enslaved people in ancient Rome than Pompeii. It is one of the reasons I chose to set The Wolf Den trilogy there. Vesuvius had no concept of what was “worthy” when it erupted in 79 CE, and the volcano’s process of preservation was entirely haphazard. It is how the town brothel survived, with its fragments of the women who worked there, their words and names still etched on the walls. The site continues to yield startling revelations about its lowliest dead. In November 2021, the director of Pompeii’s archaeological park announced the rare discovery of a “slaves’ room” within a grand villa’s estate, just north of the city walls.

The find is unique. Left in a remarkable state of preservation, the room is a cross between a storage space and cramped living quarters. It contains two adult-sized beds along with a third, much smaller one. Personal touches are few; the people living here were rammed together with parts of their owner’s chariot, as much possessions as the physical objects they toiled over. One of the theories about those who lived here is that they were an enslaved family: a couple and their child. I found it impossible not to think of Philos when I read this; about the life he wanted to build with his wife, Restituta, and the life he and Amara hoped to build with Rufina. There must have been so many families living under these conditions, striving to find love and companionship in a world that denied them their most basic human needs.