Sophia’s Visions, Part 5. Sophia sees the year of the four emperors, and Vespasian healing a blind man in the temple of Serapis. A B2 English lesson on modal verbs of deduction, with a gamebook.
Alexandria · the 754th year since the founding of Rome · 1 CE
Sophia’s Visions, Part 5 · Modal verbs of deduction: must, might, can’t · B2+
Think first. If a famous leader were filmed healing a blind man, would you believe it? What would you want to know first?
While you read, notice how the characters guess what happened when they cannot be sure: he must have …, she might have …, it can’t have ….
Philo: “We went to the Serapeum that afternoon to fetch a book. We came back arguing. Read it, and decide for yourself.”
The Serapeum stood on its hill in the south-west of the city, above a hundred steps, so high that from its porch you could see the sea on one side and the lake on the other. Inside the great hall, in the half-dark, sat the god himself: Serapis, enormous, bearded, crowned with a basket of grain, his skin of dark blue stone.
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