The tavern smelled of sour wine, old bread, and men’s sweat — a mixture both familiar and oddly comforting. Clay cups clinked on worn wooden tables, the wine inside thinned with water and poured from an unmarked amphora propped in a cracked stand. No one asked for labels or years; they drank to forget the calendar.
Above the noise, Asellius cursed the lad who spilled a cup, while a one-eyed muleteer played dice with a clerk from the census office. No silverware, no glass. Just terracotta and hands, and a cracked oil lamp sputtering against the evening gloom. This was Rome, stripped of marble, but still alive.