Arete

Maeve Niall

...of people in the forum, Arete tried her best to hurry and not look like she was hurrying. Slipping away had been easy, but getting to speak with one of her 'friends' and getting back in time...that would difficult.

She twisted around an irate baker suing his landlord, a woman screaming at her husband, more landlords being sued. Twice she bumped into a set of slaves carrying packages, and then she almost tripped over a senator and stepped on his purple-edged toga. This was not a good day...

"Watch were you're going, you stupid Greekling!"

Senator's Widow

Celia Didius

...the quiet, oh-so-respectable Senator's widow sat, at her weaving, as a good Roman matrona should. She lived elegantly but simply, and the only thing those who knew her might have commented on was that she seemed to have such a small staff.

What upper-class Rome did not know about her was worth her life: that one of the rooms in her spacious domus was, in fact, a chapel for this new, foreign, hated superstition, where rich and poor mingled without distinction.

Yes, the Senator's widow was... a Christian!

Chloe, servant

Lepida Furius

Chloe slipped behind the bustling buildings of the Forum Boarium, where merchants shouted and wheedled, selling and buying wares from every corner of the Empire. She looked about to see if anyone were following her--surely if there had been, they would have been lost in the crowds by now.

She turned and headed for the entrance to the catacombs--those dark, twisting, underground tombs which were now, ironically, one of the few places in Rome where her life was safe.