Everyone Arrives at Once

My father says a season in Alexandria will make a scholar of me. I told him a season in Alexandria would make anyone want to go home.

And yet here you are, at the doors of the largest library in the world, complaining to the library itself. I'm Sophia. I teach here, when the library isn't teaching for me.

You must be the Roman boy Sophia was warned about. I'm Philo — my family's business brings me here most days, but I'd come anyway. I like knowing why things are said the way they're said.

I like things to be said as briefly as possible. I only came because the only other choice was helping with my father's account books.

Then you've picked the wrong city to be bored in. I'm Demetria — ask me anything about the streets outside these walls, and I'll ask Sophia anything about the scrolls inside them.

A fair division. Between the four of us, we'll manage to learn something about this language, whether Marcos wants to or not.

Before any of you learn anything, you'll need to know what year you're learning it in. I keep the library's records, and even I have to ask which calendar the visitor prefers.

He asks everyone that. He's never once been satisfied with the answer.

By the count my people keep from the world's beginning, it is the year three thousand, seven hundred and sixty-one.

By the Greek reckoning, it is the first year of the hundred and ninety-fifth Olympiad — we count in four-year stretches, from one set of games to the next.

And Rome would call it the seven hundred and fifty-fourth year since the city was founded — which is, at least, a number I didn't have to be taught. It's carved on half the buildings at home.

And here in Egypt, the scribes simply count the years of Caesar's rule: this is his thirtieth. Four people, four different numbers, and every single one of them correct. If you can't agree on what year it is, I don't hold much hope for the grammar.

You'd be surprised. A year can be named four ways and still be one year. A word, as it turns out, can mean four different things too — and that's tomorrow's problem, not today's.

Four meanings for one word. I already regret asking what we're doing tomorrow.

You didn't ask. She told you anyway. I'd get used to that, if I were you — it happens rather a lot around here.

Welcome to the library, Marcos. Try not to trip over anything important on your way in.