"Eureka!" Bethesda suddenly cried, echoing the famous exclamation of the mathematician Archimedes, although I doubt she had ever heard of him. I hurried to her side. Sure enough, she held in her hands a truly admirable bunch of radishes-firm and red, with crisp, green leaves and long, trailing roots. "How much?" she cried, startling the vendor with her vehemence.

He quickly recovered himself and smiled broadly, sensing a motivated buyer. The price he named was astronomical.

"That's robbery!" I snapped.

"But look how fine they are," he insisted, reaching out to caress the radishes in Bethesda's hands as if they were made of solid gold. "You can still see the good Etruscan earth on them. And smell them! That's the smell of hot Etruscan sunshine."

"They're just radishes," I protested.

"Just radishes? I challenge you, citizen, to find another bunch of radishes in all this market to match them. Go ahead! Go and look. I'll wait." He snatched the radishes back from Bethesda.

"I can't afford it," I said. "I won't pay it."

"Then someone else will," said the vendor, enjoying his advantage. "I'm not budging on the price. These are the finest radishes you'll find anywhere in Rome, and you'll pay what I ask or do without."

"Perhaps," said Bethesda, her dark brows drawn together, "perhaps I could manage with just two radishes. Or perhaps only one. Yes, one would do, I'm sure. I imagine we can afford one, can't we, Husband?"

I looked into her brown eyes and felt a pang of guilt. Bethesda had been my wife for more than twenty years. Before that she had been my concubine; she was practically a child when I acquired her in Alexandria, back in the days of my footloose youth. Her beauty and her aloofness-oh yes, she had been very aloof, despite the fact that she was a slave-had driven me wild with passion.