You think the traffic on Main Street is bad?

It’s nothing compared with the city traffic in Roman Alexandria. For example, in THE DEADLIEST SPORT, Miriam mentions the street philosophers. Along with the cloying beggars and gawking tourists, they choke the Canopic Way, the longest and most impressive boulevard in Alexandria. Running five miles from the Gate of the Sun in the east to the Gate of the Moon in the west, its one-hundred-foot-wide granite pavement lined with porticoes and colonnades, monuments and statues, sphinxes and temples, is also clogged by camel caravans, chariots, mule-drawn wagons, groaning oxcarts, rumbling drays, sedan chairs, and curtained litters, never mind the usual cohort of legionnaires with their hobnail boots scraping against the pavement.

So, next time you find yourself complaining about the jam up at the traffic light, pick up your copy of THE DEADLIEST SPORT and take comfort from the fact that Miriam had to brave that same nuisance. What? You don’t have your copy yet? Then click here: