Sophia’s Visions, Part 10. Rome and Han China knew each other only through middlemen. Sophia sees Gan Ying’s mission of 97 CE, which turned back at the edge of the sea. A C1 English lesson on inversion after negative adverbials, with a gamebook.
Alexandria · the 754th year since the founding of Rome · 1 CE
Sophia’s Visions, Part 10 · Inversion for emphasis: Never had…, Not until… did…, Only then… · C1
Think first. Two great empires, each with millions of people, traded with each other for centuries, and never met. How could that happen?
While you read, look for sentences that begin with words like Never, Not until, Only and Little. What happens to the word order after them?
Philo: “A rich lady came to the Library that day, dressed in something that looked like water. Read what Sophia saw in it.”
The lady was the wife of a grain merchant, and she had come to borrow a book of love poems. She was wearing a dress so fine and light that it moved like smoke when she walked, and so thin that Marcos turned bright red and found something very interesting to look at on the ceiling.
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