Is this real, or did she make it up? The journeys, accidents, violent reversals of fortune, the pirates, brigands, unexpected murders, earthquakes, abandoned babies; the reader's head is whirling. Whatever next? This is the Eastern Mediterranean in the years after Alexander the Great. Lydia, high-class courtesan, pirate's moll, bandit chief, and intimate confidante of Queen Berenice of Egypt herself, but also student of mathematics and astronomy, friend of the greatest scientists of the age, in the greatest city of ancient world Alexandria, where she meets everybody... but can we trust her memory?