Dr. Jessica Venner

And we've got the classic counter.

We've got the shrine on the wall with the serpent.

We've got a dining room at the back that people would definitely have been gambling in and trying to pull women.

So I think it's like a really vibrant place, this inn, back in AD 79.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, this is, again, one of those very rare... Because of the way I wrote this book, I had to find case studies that were very well documented because I wanted it to be as factual as possible and as much as it might sound like fiction.

I wanted it to be based in fact.

If it can't have happened plausibly or didn't happen, it's not in the book.

And so the Temple of Isis is a really good example of that where the excavators, even though it was excavated really early, put a huge amount of effort into recording every bit of this temple.

and preserving it.

If you go to the Archaeological Museum in Naples, and I recommend everybody goes, they have pretty much everything from the temple there.

It's reconstructed even in this little plastic model, which is just fantastic.

You walk in and my character, Amasucius, again, did exist.

He's on a fresco.

He's depicted his classic bald head that the priests would have.

They were completely hairless, pluck out eyelashes and everything in his robes.

And underneath is a little name.

And it's been interpreted as different names, but Amasucius is what I can read.

And I'm sticking with that.