The Wolf Den

The first installment in a trilogy, the novel is set in AD 74 Pompeii and follows Amara, an enslaved prostitute working at the Wolf Den, a brothel. The Romans called both brothels and dens of wolves by the same name, and prostitutes were known as she-wolves. Before her enslavement, Amara was Timarete, the daughter of Timaios, a doctor in the Greek town of Aphidnai. After her father died, her mother sold Amara to Chremes, a former patient who promised to keep her as a household slave. Instead, Chremes used her as a concubine, and when his jealous wife Niobe intervened, Amara was sold again as a prostitute and shipped to the slave market in Puteoli, where the pimp Felix purchased her alongside Dido, a young woman from Carthage who had been kidnapped by pirates.

The story opens in February when Felix's five women are expelled from a private bathing event. Their rival pimp Simo has bribed the bath manager Vibo to throw out Felix's women while Simo's own women, led by the beautiful Drauca, remain to entertain wealthy male clients. Dreading their master's rage, Amara and Victoria, the boldest of the group, report to Felix, a wiry, menacing freedman whose cruelty keeps everyone in fear. When Amara suggests he bribe Vibo rather than punish him, Felix is intrigued but furious at receiving unsolicited advice. He orders all five women to sexually service Vibo for free and demands each earn five denarii by the next day.

The novel establishes the grim rhythms of the brothel: cramped stone cells lit by phallic oil lamps, walls covered in soot-stained frescoes. Victoria, the only woman born in Pompeii, was found as a baby on a rubbish heap and raised in slavery. Dido, formerly a respectable girl from Carthage, struggles with the daily degradation. Cressa, the eldest, carries a hidden grief: Felix sold her three-year-old son Cosmus, and she has never spoken his name since, drowning her sorrow in alcohol. When Amara and Dido solicit customers at the Forum and bring men back to the brothel, two men assault Amara simultaneously before Cressa intervenes. Felix later summons Amara to his study, recalling how her defiant bearing at the slave market reminded him of the goddess Diana. He chokes her nearly unconscious and rapes her, warning her never to imagine she is cleverer than he is.

A visit to a pottery shop introduces Menander, a Greek slave from Athens whose family sold him when they ran out of money. The two share an instant connection rooted in their lost homeland, and their exchange of real names, Kallias and Timarete, represents the most intimate form of trust between freeborn people forced into slavery. To pursue financial independence, Amara begins brokering loans on Felix's behalf, pitching herself as a discreet female agent who can reach women borrowers Felix never could. Her first client is Marcella, a fast-food seller desperate for money to help her sister Fulvia. Marcella signs the agreement under financial pressure, surrendering her mother's amber necklace as surety, though Amara privately promises more time to repay, a promise Felix's freedman Gallus warns is reckless.

At the Vinalia, the April festival celebrating Venus, Amara and Dido perform Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite" in the Forum, attracting two wealthy young men: Quintus Fabius Proculus and his friend Marcus. Felix negotiates a lucrative fee for the pair to perform at a dinner hosted by the freedman Zoilus. At the party, a wealthy man named Cornelius offers 70 denarii for a trial performance and 90 for future bookings, launching the women's musical career. Felix then reveals he has had Simo's bar attacked in retaliation for the baths incident, and Drauca lost an eye. Felix makes clear Amara is complicit: If the attack is traced, he could offer Dido to Simo as compensation, binding Amara to silence. When Drauca later dies, presumably killed by Simo because he could no longer bear her disfigured face, the women are shaken.

Amara's collection of Marcella's overdue debt forces her to confront how much she resembles Felix. When Marcella cannot pay, Amara threatens arson and takes her dead mother's cameo ring. At the July games, Amara and Menander spend their first extended time alone and share their first kiss. She recognizes the gulf between desire she has chosen and the constant unwanted contact of her working life.

Amara's fortunes shift when Pliny, the Admiral of the Roman Fleet, invites her to his borrowed house for a week after she impresses him by quoting the Greek physician Herophilos, whose medical texts her father taught her to read. Pliny shows no sexual interest, instead asking her to read aloud for his research. On her final night, she begs him to buy her, but he gently refuses. Before she leaves, he introduces her to Rufus, a pleasant but naive young man, suggesting Amara be "a loyal, helpful friend" (251) to him. Pliny gives her a scroll of Herophilos's On Pulses, but Felix confiscates it when she returns. Back at the brothel, she finds Felix has bought a new woman: Britannica, a silent and fierce Briton who violently resists customers and trusts only Cressa.

Rufus begins courting Amara, and she refuses to sleep with him at first, gambling that delay will deepen his attachment. Felix moves her to a storeroom above the brothel after Rufus pays a retainer. Working on Felix's accounts, Amara observes his operation firsthand. Felix confesses he was born in the brothel to a mother who was a prostitute, and the previous pimp freed him only after a "long apprenticeship" (348). Meanwhile, Amara sends Dido to tell Menander she has a patron, ending their communication without facing him herself.

One afternoon at the harbour, Cressa reveals she is pregnant and cannot face losing another child; Felix has promised any future babies will be left on the town rubbish heap. While Amara watches helplessly, unable to swim, Cressa ties her cloak to a heavy amphora and drowns herself. The women mourn together, throwing out their customers in a collective act of defiance and pooling money for a memorial.

Amara cultivates Rufus toward buying her freedom, following advice from Drusilla, a freed courtesan who warns that Rufus will never love Amara more than he does now. Victoria, whose genuine love for Felix has become apparent, slaps Amara out of jealousy and tearfully confesses her feelings. The conflict with Simo escalates when a man attacks Amara at the paupers' field with a knife, declaring the assault is revenge for Drauca. Victoria kills the attacker with a clay shard to the neck. Felix then eliminates Simo permanently: Amara and Victoria serve as decoys outside Simo's bar while Felix's men set it on fire, and Paris, Felix's slave son, stabs Simo in the chaos.

Rufus's father Hortensius examines Amara like property and opposes freeing her, since it would mean giving her the family name. Philos, Rufus's most trusted slave, reveals Rufus is still sleeping with Faustilla, a young slave girl in the household. At the Saturnalia, the December festival when masters serve their slaves, Menander finds Amara and gives her a clay lamp he made depicting Helen of Troy from Aphidnai, a deeply personal gift. When Rufus arrives and becomes jealous, Amara denies knowing Menander, calling him "just some slave boy" (437), and deliberately drops the lamp, shattering it to secure her future.

Rufus announces he is purchasing Amara on behalf of Pliny, who has offered 6,000 sesterces. Felix accepts. Rufus grants Amara her freedom, declaring her new name: Gaia Plinia Amara, Liberta. During the celebrations, however, Balbus, Simo's former freedman, attacks Felix with a knife in the packed Forum. Felix dives out of the way, and the blade strikes Dido in the back. She dies in Britannica's arms with Amara holding her hand.

Amara settles into a rented house as a freedwoman, mourning Dido in private. She discovers Pliny's letter to Rufus, which argued for her freedom through a metaphor about caged birds "mute in captivity" (448). It was Pliny's name, not the money, that made her freedom possible, since Rufus's father would never have allowed the family name to be given to a former brothel slave. Through an intermediary, Amara sends Felix a wooden statue of Diana, the huntress goddess, a final message that she has become the defiant woman he once saw in her at the slave market.