Ostia, The Port Of Ancient Rome

In The Deadliest Lie, Miriam eavesdropped on Binyamin when his sponsor, the illustrious retired gladiator Sergius, made plans for the young man to travel to Capua to train as a gladiator:

Sergius went through all the incidental arrangements and costs beginning with boarding Binyamin and storing his provisions at The Pegasus—the waterfront inn and warehouse likely to be closest to his pier—until the ship’s herald announces her departure. I missed most of the other details. I was so distracted by the tributaries of henket dribbling from the sides of Sergius’s mouth and washing into that nasty humor leaking from his eyes, but he ended with Binyamin’s overland transportation from the Roman port of Ostia to the school in Capua.

Ostia became part of the Roman republic around 400 BCE, when the city was conquered and made into a naval base complete with a fort. By Miriam’s time, the first century CE, when Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean, Ostia served as a prosperous city and busy commercial port.

Ostia sits at the mouth of the Tiber River, where the ocean-going crafts from across the Mediterranean would dock and unload cargo to be transferred to barges and sent up-river some 25 miles to Rome. The word “Ostia,” plural of ostium, is derived from the word “os,” the Latin word for “mouth.” But due to silting, the site now lies 2 miles from the sea.

But you do not have to travel to Ostia and then Capua to follow the adventures of Miriam’s brother. According to the reviews, readers feel as if they are there when they read The Deadliest Lie. To watch the book trailer and see for yourself click here.