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“In other households where I'd served, the matron of the house rarely paid me any mind unless something with a meal had gone wrong. Instead, here she was, telling me she was protecting me from the whims of my new master.
She walked around the kitchen, peering into bowls and tasting from the dishes with the tips of her fingers. The rushing slaves slowed when she came near and hardworking scowls turned into smiles of pride when she commented on their work. When a blond wisp of a girl from Germania dropped a basket of apples and they tumbled across the floor, Aelia bent to help her pick them up. She waved off the slaves who came to her side, talking gaily as she and the girl placed the apples back in the basket. "Give the bruised ones out to the other slaves," she said, winking at the girl, who bowed her thanks repeatedly.”
― Crystal King, Feast of Sorrow

“Aelia, please stop worrying. You look beautiful. We've had large parties before and you haven't been nervous." There was the clink of cosmetic pots and bottles of nard used to perfume the forehead.
"I wasn't nervous until you mentioned Ovid would be coming," Aelia said.
Aelia was not alone in her love of Ovid's poetry. Passia had read every word the man had ever written. He was considered to be one of Rome's experts on both love and beauty, and most women I knew owned several of his books. When Passia heard he would be in attendance I thought she might swoon.
There was the ruffle of a scroll being unraveled. "Could this be one of the sources of your concern? Women's Facial Cosmetics?"
I remembered the book. Apicius had bought it and other Ovid titles for Aelia two years earlier as a Saturnalia gift.
"I know, I shouldn't worry. But if he didn't know so much, how could he write it down? It is as though he were the mouthpiece for Venus herself!”
― Crystal King, Feast of Sorrow

“So many things had gone well for me since I'd come to Baiae from Maximus's villa in Pompeii. Apicius increasingly turned to me for advice on his affairs, even outside the kitchen. Aelia and Apicata had become as close as family. The kitchen slaves respected me and worked hard to gain both my favor and Apicius's. My love for Passia had bloomed in the sun of this festive town. Truly, I thought, I had found a form of Elysium here in Baiae, made all the more sweet by the fact that at any time it could have been swept away-”
― Crystal King, Feast of Sorrow

“I loved Vinalia. Every year Passia and I looked forward to the first feast of the three-day festival. Aelia would line up the servants on both sides of the long hallway leading from the front door through the atrium. Together Apicius, Apicata, and Aelia would walk the lines and place a grape on the tongue of each slave and say a blessing to the lady Venus. Then Apicius would have ten jars of his best Falernian wine brought up from the cellar and he would give them to his most loyal servants. I would make sweet curds and honey tarts for the whole household, slaves included, and we would read poetry and listen to music.”
― Crystal King, Feast of Sorrow