In Bed With Lord Byron

like men who were bossy or domineering. I liked men who respected women as equals. Men like Anthony . . .
    When the games ended, I waited for everyone else to leave first. Finally there was just me and Ovid sitting in the empty amphitheatre, a few benches apart. Ovid looked at me. I
ignored him. He let out a sigh and came and sat down next to me.
    I stared at him witheringly. He looked at my breasts in a pointed fashion. I coughed. Still he looked.
    ‘For goodness’ sake, d’you have to be so obvious? Can’t you look somewhere else?’ I cried.
    ‘Well, your clothes are rather inviting,’ Ovid pointed out.
    I looked down and discovered that my tunic was gaping open. Oh dear God, I ought to have applied some Tit-Tape. I hastily rearranged it and flushed, wondering how long it had been like that.
    Ovid, meanwhile, rose and with a cheeky ‘Bye then!’ sauntered off, leaving me with a face like an oven.
    Total bastard, crap poet, silly patronising lousy-bearded lunatic! I soon ran out of names, but I felt calmer now. Down below in the arena, men were sweeping sand over the bloodstains –
nice. Well, since I didn’t seem to have taken to Ovid, perhaps I should go home, I thought.
    But it seemed a bit of an anticlimax just to pop home. It was Sunday evening; there was
nothing
on telly except some boring antiques roadshow programme; all I had to look forward to was
going to bed alone, ready to wake up for a Monday morning start in the office. I’d actually rather just sit here in the stadium for a while, I thought, enjoying the sun, if nothing else.
    I glanced back up the tiers of benches behind me. Ovid had definitely gone. Good. Though I had to admit, I wouldn’t have minded a little more sparring with him. It wasn’t that I
liked him or anything – I just wanted to have the last word.
    I stood up. I’ll just have a quick wander about, I thought. I might well bump into him again. And in the mean time, I’ll get to have a fabulous look around Rome. I felt excitement
flutter in my stomach like a ribbon. The last time I had been here had been on a family holiday with my parents when I was about three or four. It would be amazing to compare the two eras.
    In many ways, Rome wasn’t all that different. There was no frenetic traffic, no tooting horns, no Vespas zooming about at top speed. But it was still a hot, noisy, dusty cauldron of energy
and Italian spirit. I spotted the Forum, the place where people shopped and traded and where speakers loved to come and test their skills; a distant voice pounded out Latin phrases with verve and
punch. School was clearly over for the day, for children were playing in the streets. I watched girls playing with rag dolls or jumping through hoops that rang with little bells on them. I watched
boys clashing wooden swords and walking on stilts. One group played tic-tac-toe; another was playing Troy, a game I remembered reading about in Latin. One boy stood opposite a whole line of friends
and screamed and struggled as they surged around him, trying to pull him over a line.
    It was fascinating watching this whirlpool of human energy. It struck me that though fashions might have mutated a thousand times since 1 BC, people hadn’t. I saw a woman, walking with her
husband, giving another man a lingering glance; I saw a young boy swooning about with a book of poetry in his hands; I saw two men arguing furiously in the street. Love, jealousy, hatred,
friendship, rivalry: every feeling was being painted here in every colour. At this very moment in time, I thought, both here and in 2005, the wheel of life is turning. Right now, at this very
moment, someone is making love, someone is giving birth, someone is getting married, someone is saying a final goodbye to life.
    I felt very small and my life so short, just a wingbeat of time.
    And I suddenly wished Anthony was here so I could talk to him about all these feelings. But he wasn’t, and so I walked on.
    I began to grow tired. Worse, I started to notice that my fake tan was melting in the heat, rimming my tunic with a brown hue. Perhaps it was time to go home.
    I also began to fear that I was lost. Was that the baths I had seen earlier, or another one? How far back had that shop been? I turned left into an empty alley, glad to be away from the crowds.
I paused for breath, momentarily distracted by the graffiti painted across the stone. I recognised the word
furcifer,
which meant – shock horror –
scoundrel
. I