The headings of Mary Beard’s notes give a taste of this astonishing book: Bad Breath, Intestinal Parasites, Performing Monkeys, One-way Streets, Kosher Food, Water Shortages. The Temple of Isis serves to bring in multiculturalism. The House of the Menander tells how a house worked. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. 154 writing tablets from the House of Caecilius Jucundus detail the accounts of its owner. A fast-food joint on the Via dell’ Abbondanza introduces food and drink and diets and street life. These are just a few of the strands that make up an extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing re-discovery, by Britain’s leading classicist.