The Thieves of Ostia
Cover of first edition, 2001
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| Author | Caroline Lawrence |
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| Cover artist | Richard Carr, Peter Sutton, Fred van Deelen |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Roman Mysteries |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Orion Children's Books |
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Publication date
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20 September 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 208 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 59512793 |
| Followed by | The Secrets of Vesuvius |
The Thieves of Ostia is a 2001 historical novel for children written by Caroline Lawrence, the first book in The Roman Mysteries series. It is set in Ostia Antica, the harbour of ancient Rome, in the last month of the reign of emperor Vespasian.
The story is set in first century Ostia. Flavia Gemina, a Roman sea-captain's daughter, solves her first mystery, the disappearance of her father's signet ring. While doing so, she meets Jonathan and his family, and gains the wherewithal to buy the African girl Nubia at the slave market. As they band together to solve the mystery of the brutal beheading of Jonathan's dog, they are joined by the mute beggar boy Lupus.
Flavia is sitting in the garden reading one of her favourite scrolls, when she hears her father call for her. Flavia enters her father's study to find him in a panic for he has lost his Castor and Pollux signet ring which Flavia's late mother gave to him. Flavia promises to find it, and the search leads her to a magpie's nest in the necropolis outside the city wall, where she finds a gathering of jewels that the magpie has stolen. Suddenly a pack of dogs chase Flavia and she is rescued by Jonathan ben Mordecai. He takes her back to his house next door to her own where she meets his father Mordecai ben Ezra, a doctor, and his sister Miriam.
Marcus takes Flavia to the harbor to sell the jewelry she found, and on the way she is moved to pity when she sees some recently disembarked slaves led by Venalicius on the way to the market. When she is given six hundred sesterces by the jeweller, she immediately decides to buy the young girl she saw with the slaves, to save her from a life of misery. Flavia treats the young slave-girl, who is called Nubia, very kindly, giving her dates to eat and beginning to teach her Latin. Later in the day she has a birthday party with her father, Nubia and the Mordecai family.
A few days later, after seeing Marcus off on a voyage, they are shocked to find that someone has killed Jonathan's dog Bobas and taken away his head. Flavia decides this is another mystery to solve, and her friends agree. Following a lead from Cordius's freedman Libertus, they suspect a sailor called Avitus who hates dogs because his daughter died of rabies after being bitten.
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