A marketplace fable set in the Romano-Greco-Phoenician city of Tyre during the reign of the Emperor Nerva The other day in the marketplace, who should I come across but Chromius the copyist. When I say “come across”, the truth is I knew I was going to meet him, and where: in the shade of the eastern portico, next to the slave-market. The place where we first met, and where he has spent so many of his most fateful hours, not least the other morning. But this is to anticipate. Here is the copyist’s story, from his first day in Tyre…