conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a plot for a book about Aviola, Albia, Polycarpus entitled Enemies at Home.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Enemies at Home: It is June in the year 89 AD, the 9th year of the reign of Domitian, and Rome is in an uproar when a newly married couple living in an apartment on the Esquiline — Valerius Aviola and Mucia Lucilia — are found strangled in bed.\nOne of their slave porters has been brutally bludgeoned and the family silver is missing.\nThe remaining slaves of the Variola household (including the injured porter, Nicostratus) are naturally suspected of being complicit in the seemingly apparent murder of their masters and the theft of the silverware, and (with the exception of Myla, a slave and Polycarpus, the family steward) manage to flee to the sanctuary of the Temple of Ceres.\nThe 2nd Vigiles Cohort is charged with investigating, but the cohort tribune Titianus gives up, and the temple's authorities are unenthusiastic about harbouring potential murderers (especially slaves who have murdered their owners) so an aedile, Tiberius Manlius Faustus, is called in to investigate.\nFaustus persuades Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco and a delatrix in her own right, to help, with the hope that she could clear the names of the slaves.\nFlavia, having fled her family at Ostia out of outright boredom whilst on holiday, agrees to Faustus' request.\nAt the Esquiline, Albia talks to Fauna, a neighbour, and learns that the entire household had been in a tumult for many nights, including the night of the murder itself.\nThe former steward Polycarpus and the Aviola slaves who managed to flee to the Temple of Ceres tell Albia that it was a botched robbery gone wrong, but Albia doubts their statements — why was Nicostratus bludgeoned, but not strangled like his owners.\nand if the slaves were within earshot of the murdered couple's bedroom, why did they not rush out to help them.\nWith the help of Faustus and her uncle Quintus, Albia soon discovers a tangled web of dark secrets, vengeance, lust and rivalry not just amongst the Aviola slaves, but within the family itself: Valerius Aviola's first wife, Galla, seems belligerent enough to want him dead after having lost him to her best friend, the late Mucia Lucilia.\nAlbia discovers that some of the slaves were originally Mucia's own staff, and both Aviola and Lucilia were planning to sell some of them off as part of a redundancy exercise, beginning with Myla, with whom Valerius used to sleep with prior to marrying Lucilia.\nAlbia also discovers sexual tensions over Amaranta, a female slave, between three male slaves: Onesimus, a steward of Lucilia's who had been sent away; Phaedrus, another porter; and Daphnus, a server.\nPhaedrus also had a feud with Nicostratus, who by now has died of his injuries.\nEqually, Galla's cousin, the executor of Valerius' will, disliked Lucilia (because Aviola was divorced from Galla) and planned to replace his slave steward Gratus with Polycarpus.\nGratus tells Albia that Myla may have given birth to many children after Aviola and Polycarpus forced themselves on her.\nWith so many conflicts within the Aviola household, Albia first suspects that someone either wanted to steal the silver or that Aviola's ex-wife put out a contract on him and Lucilia, so she investigates the local racketeers in the vicinity, the Rabirii.\nTitianus, Albia and Faustus track down a nephew of the Rabirii crime lord named Roscius, who admits that he was in the Aviola apartment but while he could not find the silver, he did see the bodies of the murdered couple.\nHe also mentions that when he was there, the house was unusually quiet and dark, in contrast to Fauna's deposition.\nCrises soon mar the investigations — Quintus is brutally assaulted, apparently by the Rabirii in the Aventine, but the 4th Vigiles Cohort apprehend one of the attackers.\nWhen the Rabirii fail to save the man, this sparks off a deadly gang war on the Esquiline, but Albia and the rest of her contacts survive.\nHowever, Polycarpus is soon found strangled in the same manner as his former owners in his own apartment above the former Aviola residence — ruling out Polycarpus and the fugitive slaves as the killer or killers.\nAlbia attends Polycarpus' wake, and discovers that Polycarpus was loyal to his late master (and former mistress Galla), which was reciprocated by the Aviola family.\nGalla did not bear much of a grudge against Lucilia or Aviola either, nor do her children, so neither Polycarpus, Galla nor her children would have had a motive for Aviola's death.\nBut when Polycarpus' widow, Graecina attempts to send Myla to the slave market, Myla scalds her with hot water, screams that she killed Aviola and Lucilia, and then drowns herself in the Tiber.\nAlbia, Fauna and Galla rush back the apartment to tend to Graecina, where over drinks the three women tell Albia of the existence of an old well in the courtyard.\nGraecina reveals clues implicating Cosmus, a slave owned by her, in the murders of the Aviola couple and Polycarpus.\nAlbia also discovers that Cosmus had a violent streak, marking him as a potential killer.\nAlbia realises that the Aviola silverware is hidden in the well, and discovers that the old well has been freshly sealed with a wooden cover, using a plank covered with dried blood.\nShe dredges up the Aviola silverware from the well and to celebrate her discovery with Faustus and his slave Dromo even drinks wine poured into one of the chalices from the well.\nFor her effots, the grateful Aviola family give a small pouch of coins to Albia.\nAlbia interrogates the slaves one last time and eventually discovers the truth: Cosmus was Myla's son and tried to compel Aviola to keep Myla and the other slaves on.\nWhen Aviola refused, Cosmus strangled him along with Lucilia, but was found out by Polycarpus, who had him detained alone in the kitchen, probably just before Roscius broke in.\nPolycarpus decided to fake a robbery to protect Cosmus and the other slaves, just as Roscius and his men attempted to rob the apartment.\nTo make it more convincing, Nicostratus was roughed up by the other slaves, but Phaedrus went too far, eventually resulting in Nicostratus' death.\nPhaedrus used a plank to beat up Nicostratus, which was then used to seal the well with the silverware inside it.\nDespite Polycarpus' best attempts to cover up his involvement in the double murder, Cosmus may have argued over the silver with Polycarpus, and eventually strangled him too in a fit of rage.\nBeing Cosmus' mother, Myla may well have tried to shield him through her suicide.\nFor their confessions, Albia decides to commend Amaranta, Daphnus and his witless brother Melander for exoneration, but she implies that the rest would not be so lucky, least of all the now fugitive Cosmus, since they all were negligent in their duty to protect their owners.\nAlbia writes a report for Faustus, advises the long-suffering Titianus to send out a warrant for Cosmus' arrest, and then returns home to Fountain Court, but it is not the end yet.\nHalfway up, Albia suddenly falls violently ill, sickened from having drunk wine mixed with tainted water from the well, but is saved and nursed back to health by Faustus.\nThe book ends with Helena, Albia's adopted mother, taking Albia back to Ostia for treatment, and Albia herself meditating on Faustus' motives for tending to her, and she admits that she longs to see him again.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Enemies at Home
  The inquiry I carried out for him already seemed long past. We would work together again, but socially and professionally there were limits.
  As we left the apartment my mother thanked Faustus, apologizing as if he had been imposed on. Brushing that aside, he asked to be kept informed of my progress, though it sounded a formality. Attendants carried the chair down to Fountain Court, where they waited for Helena while she talked to Rodan. It was always good to witness a hoary ex-gladiator being reduced to slush by a sweet but stern woman. Manlius Faustus also watched with amusement, as he stood with his thumbs hooked into his belt on what passed for a pavement.
  Helena had already sized him up. Later, I was to hear her tell my father that Manlius Faustus looked like a man you could ask to take charge of your wood cart as a quick favor, then when you came back, he would have unloaded all the logs for you and stacked them neatly.
  In the depths of the chair, I dwelt on what had just happened between us. The Aviola case had given me a portrait of life with many slaves. In such households, the owners are never alone. Their slaves carry out the most intimate tasks for them—physical, financial, sexual. Slaves make excuses for them and form a protective barrier. In one way they ensure privacy, yet their constant presence everywhere means their owners have no privacy at all.
  Those few days that I spent being cared for by Faustus were absolutely private. He could easily have brought in slaves to help him, but I know he never considered it. I would tell no one, not even my mother, the details of how he nursed me; in the future, he and I might not even acknowledge it between ourselves. It had been the most intimate intervention, one I would not have tolerated from anybody else. I accepted it from him because of this: Faustus did everything not because he was obliged to look after me as a slave would be, but because he wanted to.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide another paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Those few days that I spent being cared for by Faustus were absolutely private. He could easily have brought in slaves to help him, but I know he never considered it. I would tell no one, not even my mother, the details of how he nursed me; in the future, he and I might not even acknowledge it between ourselves. It had been the most intimate intervention, one I would not have tolerated from anybody else. I accepted it from him because of this: Faustus did everything not because he was obliged to look after me as a slave would be, but because he wanted to.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I realized that, oddly, Faustus had enjoyed looking after me. I even thought that as I was taken away, he watched me go a little sadly.