Somewhere in the middle of this discourse, he had switched from Latin to Greek, and it took my mind a moment to catch up.

“That may be … a challenge,” I finally said, pausing to think of the Greek word.

Antipater sighed. “Your words may be Greek, but your accent is decidedly Roman.”

“You told the document-checker I had a good accent!”

“Yes, well … perhaps you should simply speak as little as possible.”

We followed the crowd and found ourselves in a marketplace thronged with pilgrims and tourists, where vendors sold all sorts of foodstuffs and a great variety of talismans. There were miniature replicas of Artemis’s temple as well as images of the goddess herself. These images came in many sizes and were fashioned from various materials, from crudely made terra-cotta or wooden trinkets to statuettes that displayed the highest standards of craftsmanship, some advertised as being cast of solid gold.

I paused to admire a statuette of the goddess in her Ephesian guise, which seems so exotic to Roman eyes. Our Artemis—we call her Diana—is a virgin huntress; she carries a bow and wears a short, simple tunic suitable for the chase. But this manifestation of the goddess—presumably more ancient—stood stiffly upright with her bent elbows against her body, her forearms extended and her hands open. She wore a mural crown, and outlining her head was a nimbus decorated with winged bulls. More bulls, along with other animals, adorned the stiff garment that covered her lower body, almost like a mummy casing. From her neck hung a necklace of acorns, and below this I saw the most striking feature of Artemis of Ephesus, a mass of pendulous, gourd-shaped protrusions that hung in a cluster from her upper body. I might have taken these for multiple breasts, had Antipater not explained to me that these protrusions were bulls’ testicles. Many bulls would be sacrificed to the virgin goddess during the festival.

I picked up the image to look at it more closely. The gold was quite heavy.

“Don’t touch unless you intend to buy!” snapped the vendor, a gaunt man with a long beard. He snatched the little statue from my hand.

“Sorry,” I said, lapsing into Latin. The vendor gave me a nasty look.

We moved on. “Do you think that image was really made of solid gold?” I asked Antipater.

“Yes, and therefore far beyond your means.”

“Do people really buy such expensive items for keepsakes?”

“Not for keepsakes, but to make offerings. Pilgrims purchase whichever of the images they can afford, then donate them to the Temple of Artemis to honor the goddess.”

“But the priests must collect thousands of talismans.”

“Megabyzoi—the priests are called Megabyzoi,” he explained. “And yes, they collect many talismans during the festivals.”

“What do the Megabyzoi do with all those images?”

“The offerings are added to the wealth of the temple treasury, of course.”

I looked at the vast number of people around us. The open-air market seemed to stretch on forever. “So the vendors make a nice profit selling the images, and the temple receives a hefty income from all those offerings.”

Antipater smiled. “Don’t forget what the pilgrims receive—participation in one of the most beloved religious festivals in the world, an open-air feast, and the favor of the goddess, including her protection on their journey home. But the donation of these trinkets is only a tiny part of the temple’s income. Rich men from many cities and even foreign kings store their fortunes in the temple’s vaults and pay a handsome fee for the service. That vast reservoir of wealth allows the Megabyzoi to make loans, charging handsome interest. Artemis of Ephesus owns vineyards and quarries, pastures and salt-beds, fisheries and sacred herds of deer. The Temple of Artemis is one of the world’s great storehouses of wealth—and every Roman governor spends his tenure trying to find some way to get his hands on it.”

We bought some goat’s cheese on a skewer from a vendor and slowly made our way through the crowd. The crush lessened as we ascended a winding street that took us halfway up Mount Pion, where we at last arrived at the house of Eutropius.

“It’s larger than I remember it,” said Antipater, gazing at the immaculately maintained facade. “I do believe he’s added a story since I was here.”

The slave who answered the door dismissed our baggage carriers and instructed some underlings to take our things to the guest quarters. We were shown to a garden at the center of the house where our host reclined on a couch, apparently just waking from a nap. Eutropius was perhaps forty, with a robust physique and the first touch of frost in his golden hair. He wore a beautifully tailored robe spun from coarse silk dyed a rich saffron hue.

He sprang up and approached Antipater with open arms. “Teacher!” he exclaimed. “You haven’t aged a bit.”

“Nonsense!” Antipater gestured to his white hair, but smiled, pleased by the compliment. He introduced me to our host.

I heard a muffled roar as the air above our heads resounded with the sound of a great many people laughing.

“From the theater,” explained Eutropius.

“But why are you not there?” asked Antipater.

“Bah! Plays bore me—all those actors making terrible puns and behaving like idiots. You taught me to love poetry, Teacher, but I’m afraid you were never able to imbue me with a love of comedy.”

“Artemis herself enjoys the performances,” said Antipater.

“So they say—even when the actors are as wooden as she is,” said Eutropius. Antipater cackled, but I missed the joke.

Antipater drew a sharp breath. “But who is this?”

“Anthea!” Eutropius strode to embrace the girl who had just entered the garden. She was a few years younger than I, and golden-haired like her father. She wore a knee-length purple tunic cinched with a silver chain tied below breasts just beginning to bud. The garment hung loosely over her shoulders, baring her arms, which were surprisingly tawny. (A Roman girl of the same social standing would have creamy white limbs, and would never display them to a stranger.) She wore a necklace of gilded acorns and a fawn-skin cape. Strapped across her shoulder was a quiver filled with brightly painted, miniature arrows. In one hand she carried a dainty little bow—clearly a ceremonial weapon—and in the other an equally dainty javelin.

“Is it Artemis herself I see?” whispered Antipater in a dreamy voice. I was thinking the same thing. The exotic Ephesian Artemis of the talismans was alien to me, but this was the Diana I knew, virgin goddess of the hunt.

Eutropius gazed proudly at his daughter. “Anthea turned fourteen just last month. This is her first year to take part in the procession.”

“No one in the crowd will look at anyone else,” declared Antipater, at which the girl lowered her eyes and blushed.

As lovely as Anthea was, my attention was suddenly claimed by the slave girl who followed her into the garden. She was older than her mistress, perhaps my age, with lustrous black hair, dark eyes, and a long, straight nose. She wore a dark blue tunic with sleeves that came to her elbows, cinched with a thin leather belt. Her figure was more womanly than Anthea’s and her demeanor less girlish. She smiled, apparently pleased at the fuss we were making over her mistress, and when she saw me looking at her, she stared back at me and raised an eyebrow. My cheeks turned hot and I looked away.

“Look at you, blushing back at Anthea!” whispered Antipater, mistaking the cause of my reaction.

Another burst of laughter resounded above us, followed by long, sustained applause.

“I do believe that means the play is over,” said Eutropius. “Teacher, if you and Gordianus want to wash up a bit and change your clothes before the procession begins, you’d better do it quickly.”

I looked up at the sky, which was beginning to fade as twilight approached. “A procession? But it’ll be dark soon.”