"We parted soon, he attracted fruitful idleness, I by the dynamism which then seemed the result of relentless energy, and was instead inability to exist in peace, fear of being too sharply reflected in a mirror that would be shattered at the first appearance of 'image".

We are faced with a magnificent fresco of the society of the Second century, dashed through 18 stories of one of the most profound interpreters of the Italian culture.