検索キーワード： 著者 "James Mace" すべてのカテゴリー

A year has passed since the end of the Gallic rebellion of Sacrovir and Florus. Retribution has been exacted, and the province is at peace once more. And yet, there are some who escaped Rome's justice. They are led by a man whose heart burns with hate; an heir to rebellion. Knowing that there can be no victory against the legions, his vengeance can only be wrought through terror and murder. The Gallic city of Lugdunum will be the first to taste his wrath.

In 89 A.D., following a failed insurrection by the governor of Upper Germania, the disgraced Legio XXI Rapax is dispatched to Pannonia, on the River Danube. The legion is purged of its senior officers and Emperor Domitian appoints the venerable Lucius Flavius Silva as the new commanding legate. A revered general, Silva famously captured the Herodian Fortress of Masada at the end of the Great Jewish Revolt, twenty years earlier.

Since the reign of Emperor Tiberius, an uneasy peace has existed along the Danube frontier between the various Sarmatian tribal kingdoms to the north and the Roman Empire to the south. Now, a new threat has emerged in Dacia, as the aged King Duras seeks to unite his people; a feat not witnessed since the legendary King Burebista more than a century before.

It is July, 67 AD. The brutal, 47-day siege of the rebel stronghold of Jotapata, in Galilee, has ended. The Roman armies of Vespasian destroyed the city and captured the leader of the resistance, Josephus ben Matthias. While being interrogated by the Roman commanding general, Josephus makes a bold prediction; Nero’s reign grows short and, in time, Vespasian himself will rise to become emperor. Intrigued, while also viewing the Jewish general as a great source of intelligence, Vespasian spares his life. He then unleashes a hell storm of fury upon the rest of Galilee and Judea itself.

It’s been forty years since the Roman conquest of southern Britannia. The hostile western regions are at last subdued and twenty years have passed since the cataclysmic Iceni Rebellion in the east. With tribal kingdoms assimilating into Roman culture and the province at relative peace, Imperial Governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola turns his attention north. The once-allied, now hostile Kingdom of Brigantes is divided between factions loyal to Rome and those of the usurper king, Venutius.

The year is 68 A.D., and the vast Roman Empire is in chaos. Provinces are in rebellion, while Emperor Nero struggles to maintain the remnants of his political power, as well as his last shreds of sanity. In the province of Hispania, the governor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, marches on Rome.

As Titus advances towards the Jewish Holy City with his massive army of 70,000 imperial soldiers, the warring Judean factions must decide whether to stand together against the coming onslaught or die in a bloodbath of mutual hatred.

It is April of 69 A.D., and Rome’s first civil war in a hundred years has ended. Emperor Otho, who violently overthrew the tyrannical Galba just three months before, is dead. The triumphant armies of the Rhine coerce the senate into ratifying their governor, Aulus Vitellius, as emperor. While there is an uneasy hope that peace has returned to Rome, Vitellius’ cronyism and utter incompetence soon alienates most of Rome’s patricians, along with many of the provinces.