The Gods of War

Начало книги

Aquila Terentius left the mountain town of Beneventum the morning after he killed the four Greeks, descending from the high hills of central Italy to the coastal plain and a proper Roman road, which would take him north.

Forced by poverty to walk and hunt his food, he had much time to consider the recent events in his life. The experience of Sicily: arriving as a boy, leaving as a man; his own participation in the recent slave revolt: the dilemma of a Roman fighting against his own kind; the way his old friend and mentor had been sacrificed by the men upon whom he had taken his bloody revenge the previous night. They had betrayed the revolt they led and abandoned their slave army to Roman revenge, the beaten slaves — men, women and children — being herded and returned to the backbreaking work on the farms whence they had come. It was hard to see them as they had so recently been, a powerful army large enough to make Rome shiver.

Читать дальше →