There are many things that are unfamiliar to him here, but there are also many other things that are the same, and any orator, even any spectator, in Rome knows the effect of overblown irony used for humor. He'd been the best orator in Rome before he'd been relegated here, and effective rhetoric is rare in this place, so even the passing use of one of its techniques makes him smile.

"I would not know what to try," he admits as he sets the fabric down back on top of the box it came in. "It would be much better if you did it," he agrees, lightly. Once he'd have been something like offended at the suggestion; it's work for a wife and a mother, not for the son of a consul. It's work that his mother or Licinia would have done well, and of all the people here, it would be Kate Kelly he'd trust with it, because he knows she sews, and she's a skilled housekeeper, cook, and manager.

"I do not believe that is is complicated," he agrees, "though I do not know how my wife and mother did it. It is a large piece of fabric made in a particular shape," he says, drawing in the air with one hand, the shape like a long truncated triangle on one side and a semicircle on the other. "For a simple toga it needs nothing else added."