A man of 30 years is thrust into the past. As he goes to each of the next three places, he meets one person who tells him about their everyday life. This time he is thrown into ancient Rome where he meets a girl of 8 years. She is warmed instantly to the man and can't wait to tell him of her story. She has short brown hair, and because of her clothing she looks almost like a boy.
"Okay, well, my name is Sophia. You can call me Sophie, Mama does. What's your name? That doesn't matter, so you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. Anyway, I'm Sophie, what do you need to know?"
"Anything you can tell me, Sophie. And, even though it doesn't matter, my name's Luis."
"Okay, Mr. Luis."
"Not Mister, just Luis."
"Okay. Then I'll just tell you everything I know. I'm a patrician. My daddy's a consul for the government. A consul is a person who gets one year to be in charge of the people. There're two consuls in Rome right now. There's the dictator too. Anyway, Daddy's a consul so we get treated real nice. Then there's the plebians. They aren't very important and they whine a lot. Mama says it's because they want to run government more, but they already do a little. They've got tribunes that help them have a say-so. That's what Mama tells me. See, the empire keeps getting bigger 'cuz we're so powerful an' we keep taking over all these other lands. We just got done fighting over this place called "Carthage". We won. We had to fight them three times. They kept taking more and more land and we got scared that they'd take us over too, so we just killed 'em. Well, we didn't really kill 'em. We made most of them slaves. We burnt down their city and, this is the good part, we put salt all over their lands so they can't grow any more food. The Romans are smart and the Carthaginians aren't. That's another thing my daddy told me. I believe him. We've gotta be pretty smart to take over so much land."
"Okay. Now what about you. I've heard enough about your government. What do you do?"
"Nothing much. Mommy teaches me how to read and write and add and things but I'm not really gonna need to know that stuff. My brother is ten though and he has a man, a very smart man, who comes and teaches him."
"So you live with your parents and brother?"
"Yep. And my sister, she's sixteen and not married yet so she probably won't get married. My brother, Markus, is eighteen and he's married. He's got a baby boy too, Octave. They all live with us. My grandparents are all gone now so we've got a pretty small household."
"Sounds pretty big to me."
"Uh, uh. My friend Armanian has five more people in his house than I have in mine. But my parents are more strict. Mama says "dicipline is the only way to live a good life." I say she's just mean. Ummmm... What else? We go to worship sometimes. Daddy says the gods are always watching us so we have to be good. Do you have a favorite god? 'Cuz I used to but Daddy said not to favor one over the others so I don't anymore. Ummm... Oh, I know! The theater. If you're gonna live here you gotta go to the theater. It's this big circle place with lots of seats. You can go in and they put this lion in there with the bad people and..."
"Isn't it wrong to kill?"
"Oh . . . yes, but these people broke the law or went against the gods or something real bad. So they put 'em in with this lion and he chases 'em around till he eats 'em. My favorite is when they put the Christians in there. See, the Christians are people who say there's only one god, so they have to be punished. They run around all over the place but the lion always gets them so there's really no point in running. You should come watch with us some time. Okay?"
"Okay! It was nice getting to know you Sophie. Maybe I'll be back sometime."
"We'll go see the lions kill the Christians, okay?"
"Alright. I better go. Bye bye."
"Bye!"