Content Warning: The novel contains themes of enslavement. This guide uses “slave” only in quoted material to reflect its use in the text.

“In Rome, nothing mattered more than the gods, and nothing mattered less than its slaves. Only a fool of a slave would ever challenge the gods’ power.”

The first sentence of the novel announces the two extremes of experience in Rome that it explores: absolute power and absolute powerlessness. In the beginning, the narrator, Nic, is at the latter extreme until he discovers an artifact that catapults him into the highest echelons of power. The second sentence foreshadows Nic’s journey to wield that artifact with the proper reverence not only for divine power but also for all those it impacts.

“I was filthy and covered in the same bruises, scrapes, and cuts as any other slave miner. And I felt how low my status was compared to a man of Radulf’s greatness. But at least I hadn’t spent the last few minutes talking about treason against the Roman Empire.”

Nic here describes coming face-to-face with Radulf for the first time after he overhears the general’s plan to bring down the Roman Empire. This establishes that Nic has a strong sense of agency from the beginning despite his circumstances of enslavement, which is evident also in his adopting two names: Nicolas Calva. This drive toward agency is both developed and challenged across the novel as Nic confronts what it means to be free and what it means to be enslaved, both in body and mind.

“Only senators, or their sons, were allowed to wear those robes, but what was a senator doing out this far from Rome? I noticed his shoes next: high buckskin boots collared black, rather than the red ones or sandals other, lower-ranking citizens wore.”

Woven into the novel’s exploration of power is the way material conditions reinforce social stratification in Rome. Luxuries are permitted for and enjoyed by the upper classes and denied to the lower classes. Nic recognizes that Valerius, however well or badly he behaves, must be a high-ranking senator because of the clothes and shoes he wears.