Dolium

The cart ruts lead forward into a city that stopped.

The Thermopolia counters are clean and dry, the Dolia empty, the painted menus advertising food that will never be served again.

The amphitheatre holds 20,000 seats and no one is sitting in them.

the bakery oven is cold the millstones are still in the house of the faun the alexander mosaic lies on the floor in the fading light its million and a half tesserae still locked in the same positions that an artisan placed them twenty-two centuries ago still showing Alexander's horse mid-stride, still showing Darius turning to flee, still depicting a battle that happened three centuries before the mosaic was made, and two millennia before you are standing in the room looking at it.

Yes.

The cell of veneria housed rows of enormous terracotta pots called dolia.

Dolia.

Right.

And a single dolium could hold upwards of a thousand liters of wine.