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ridges of Tarquinia jutted against the sky: one a necropolis; one the capital city of Etruria, with walls of mortarless stone and battlemented towers, arched entrances and basalt thoroughfares. Olive groves flanked the ridges, and cypress trees, like bronze inverted cones, shaded the highways which joined Tarquinia to her port.
    We moored near the mouth of a canal roofed by a massive barrel vault. Preceded and followed by Black Rats, I descended the ship’s ladder and received Astyanax from the arms of the one-eared sailor. Like the other male slaves in Etruscan cities, I was stripped and barefoot. Nakedness in itself did not embarrass me; Etruscans, used to a climate which discourages excessive clothing, are not a modest people. But nakedness, as now, in the heart of a town, signified shame and the loss of liberty. What was more, I carried on my forearm a brand in the shape of a shark. If I called for help, the entire crew of the Turan would point to the scar and insist that I belonged to Vel, who had the right to sell me. Astyanax, fortunately, had not been branded. Vel did net want to mar him as a curiosity.
    Beyond the vault a midday sun blazed on a forest of sails. There was no real harbor, but a network of moles and jetties buttressed the small indentations of the coast, and a multitude of ships lay moored or anchored: Sardinian cargo boats in the shape of plowshares; Tyrian traders redolent of cedar; Greek penteconters, ironically berthed beside the same Etruscan merchantmen which, on the high seas, sometimes fell prey to their speed and their vicious beaked prows. The Etruscan ships, both merchant and war, were broader and taller than the Greek, slower but far more seaworthy in rough waters. Some looked battered, with rent sails and crusted hulls, and I guessed that they must have returned from the stream of Ocean, where the waves were as tall as palaces. I looked frantically for someone I knew—a captain with whom I had sailed, a visitor from Caere. I looked in vain.
    Away from the ships, the highways rumbled with chariots hammered from bronze and wooden carts on ponderous wheels of stone. Pedestrians walked the footpaths beside the highways and, bright as coquina shells, paraded their colored robes—Tyrian purple, red of cinnabar, yellow of saffron crocuses—or their silken loin cloths, trimmed with gilt and artfully tapered to flatter the wearer’s hips. I had walked with such crowds in most Etruscan cities; I had worn robes whose color rivaled the halcyon, and I had carried a sword at my side. Women had stared at me, and I had returned their stares indifferently, sleepily, if at all, confident that she whom I sought did not inhabit the city, but waited, patient and dreaming at the end of my furthest voyage. Today I walked as a slave, and the women looked over or through me or at the Triton I carried in my arms. I heard them whisper:
    “A Triton!”
    “A boy with a tail!”
    “And hair to match!”
    But no one said, “Look at the man who carries him!”
    The Mart of the Slaves was a square in the middle of that larger square, the town marketplace: a small paved island surrounded by the canvas-roofed stalls of farmers selling their grapes and fishermen their tunnies and herring. A low platform, set against a wooden backdrop, rose like the stage of a theater and allowed the slaves to parade or be prodded like actors. We had to wait our turn. Vel, the three Black Rats, and the one-eared sailor shoved me into a circle beside the platform.
    A young woman with cinnamon hair, probably a Greek, stood on the block. Nude, she turned at her owner’s prompting to display her full, perfect breasts and the bold flare of her thighs. She looked supremely bored and her eyes seemed to say, “You needn’t expect me to cringe like a pale little virgin. I have been sold before.” Several young gallants were bidding against each other in excited voices. Finally she went for five hundred asses to a youth who stepped forward