7 entries in the world of The Kept Flame.
The overseer's wife, and the warm centre of the house. Married thirty years, she keeps a home in the streets above the State Agora where the door opens to whoever knocks and nobody is hurried out again. She holds no office and says little…
Senior overseer of the Ephesian church: a man in his sixties who has spent thirty years keeping order in a scattered community that meets in houses across a great city. The correspondence with the coast-road assemblies, the disputes, the…
Philaretos's sister, and the reason the household stands up. Kira has kept the accounts since she was fifteen, when their father died and left the two of them a name in the trade; she reads the money where her brother reads the words. She…
A scroll-copyist in the craftsman quarter of Ephesus, and a specialist in the Ephesia grammata — the famous spell-scrolls the city exported across the Greek-speaking world. He is good at it: a real, unexamined skill, and a sister who keeps…
A silversmith of Ephesus whose living comes off the pilgrim trade — the miniature shrines, the amulets, the small holy things people carry home from the greatest temple in the world. His guild is the one that rioted against Paul two…
The man who taught Philaretos the scroll trade — and taught his father before him. Broad, slow, generous, with a craftsman's ruined eyes. Euander has watched religion change in Ephesus before and adjusted without bitterness, and he makes…
Neokoros — the priest-administrator of the Temple of the Sebastoi, and therefore keeper of the honour that makes Ephesus twice temple-keeper. Flavius believes, sincerely and without cynicism, that Rome's order is what holds the peace, and…