Drawing convulsive gasps that wracked her tiny body, little Julia Florentina lay limp in her father’s arms. It did not matter what precisely had sickened her—there was neither time nor need in this world for medical diagnoses. The only thing that mattered was whether she would live or die, and as the daylight grew thin, the ominous answer became stealthily clearer. The child’s mother reached for a small container kept high up in a recessed wall shrine next to the small bronze images of the family gods, the lares; the box’s precious contents were safe there, far from hungry mice. Time was short, and the mother needed to take matters in her own hands, for her daughter’s salvation was at stake. She placed a small piece of dry bread in her child’s parched mouth, already open in the O-shape that signaled that death was near. A moment of confusion,...

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