He has managed, inevitably, to hit on one of the most shameful parts of her story. “My father did not always charge his patients as he should have,” she says, feeling the need even now to defend him for his neglect. “The debts we expected to call in were never paid. And he had significant debts of his own. What dowry there was, my mother spent to provide for us both.”

Pliny is outraged. “But this was the most terrible negligence! From both of them!” He sees the distress on her face. “No, I am sorry, go on. You were sold as a house slave. What then.”

“My mother left the money she was paid for my sale with my possessions,” Amara says, wanting at least to clear her mother of greed. “But my new master took it, and he did not use me as a house slave, as promised, but as a concubine.” Pliny rolls his eyes, as if amazed anyone could have been duped into imagining otherwise. “I was there perhaps a year, but his wife became jealous and sold me as a whore. I was taken to Puteoli and sold there at the market to the pimp who runs the town brothel. That is how I am here.”

“The journey of the mind is always stranger than that of the body,” Pliny says, cryptically. “How have you adjusted? You must have spent your early life imagining becoming . . . what? A respected wife? A mother?”

“I knew that was my duty.”

“What did you want then, if not that?”

“What I wanted was idle daydreaming,” she says. Pliny huffs, impatient at her quibbling. Amara gives up. “I wanted to be a doctor,” she says. “Like my father. I just assumed this was going to happen because of all the hours he had me spend reading his texts. I had not understood. Then when I mentioned it one day, he explained that, of course, this was not possible.”

“That isn’t strictly true,” Pliny replies. “Certainly, you could not have practiced medicine like your father, but there have always been women scholars, philosophers, living modest enough lives. Especially in Attica. But I understand his concern at the irregularity. Though,” he mutters, clearly still irritated by her parents, “that was all the more reason to have saved up the dowry.” He puts down the tablets, glancing round at his books. “Do you have a good reading voice?”

“I suppose I must have.”

“Excellent. You can help me a little, while you are here.” He switches to Greek. “We can even read Herophilos, if you wish. I’m minded to include him in my Natural History.”

Pliny’s accent is appalling, but his Greek is perfectly fluent. “I should like that so much,” she says, smiling at him. “It would be a pleasure for me.”