Quote image editor
“Aelia, please stop worrying. You look beautiful. We've had large parties before and you haven't been nervous." There was the clink of cosmetic pots and bottles of nard used to perfume the forehead. "I wasn't nervous until you mentioned Ovid would be coming," Aelia said. Aelia was not alone in her love of Ovid's poetry. Passia had read every word the man had ever written. He was considered to be one of Rome's experts on both love and beauty, and most women I knew owned several of his books. When Passia heard he would be in attendance I thought she might swoon. There was the ruffle of a scroll being unraveled. "Could this be one of the sources of your concern? Women's Facial Cosmetics?" I remembered the book. Apicius had bought it and other Ovid titles for Aelia two years earlier as a Saturnalia gift. "I know, I shouldn't worry. But if he didn't know so much, how could he write it down? It is as though he were the mouthpiece for Venus herself!” — Crystal King