The month of Maius had been overcast and rainy so far, and this day promised to be no different. For twenty-four years this had been the Roma seen from his room, a jumble of the rich and poor-mostly the poor-where slaves labored endlessly in vast store houses to accommodate all the goods and grain that arrived day after day, carried up the river from the great world beyond, the world that belonged to Roma. 'Why, from our rooftop, when I was a girl,' she would say, 'I could see the smoke from sacrifices on the Capitoline, watch the chariot races below, and even catch a glimpse of the emperor himself, strolling on one of his terraces across the way.' ('All at the same time, Camilla?' Lucius's father would say, gently mocking her.) But this was the view Lucius had grown up with.

How his mother hated this view! Born into a wealthy branch of the Cornelius family, she had grown up in a house on the other, more fashionable side of the Aventine Hill, with a view of the vast Circus Maximus below, the Capitoline Hill crowned by temples off to one side, and, directly opposite, the opulent Palatine Hill, where the emperor lived. On the far side of the Tiber, woods and meadows were divided into the private estates of the rich, which extended to the far horizon of hills and mountains. Farther down the hill, humbler houses and tenements and artisans' workshops were crowded close together, and farther yet was a flat expanse with large granaries and ware houses close to the Tiber. The nearer houses, along the crest of the hill, were large and well made, like his family's house. Below him was the slope of the Aventine Hill. His room, with a small balcony looking west, was on the upper floor of the house. The slaves were up and beginning to stir, stoking the kitchen fire and opening shutters.

He heard other sounds from elsewhere in the house. The dream had filled him with a sense of urgency and confusion.Īwake now, Lucius heard a faint rumble of thunder in the distance. There were vultures and eagles, ravens and crows, every sort of bird imaginable, soaring and flapping their wings, yet making no more sound than the silent lightning. No clouds obscured the stars, and yet there was lightning in the dream, lightning without thunder, random flashes of blinding light that illuminated great flocks of birds that suddenly filled the dark sky. In his dream there was no earth, only a dark, empty sky, and beyond the sky, unimaginably vast, the crystalline firmament in which the stars shone brightly.

Empire steven saylor