No Roads Lead ToRome

R.S. GompertzVia del Prat

No Roads Lead to Rome

© 2009 R.S. GompertzAll rights reserved This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.This ebook may not be re-sold, or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each personyou share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, thenyou should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of thisauthor.2

EditionSW 061511Print ISBN: 978-0-9825829-0-9Library of Congress Control Number: 2009940539www.noroadsleadtorome.comVía del Prat

Prologue

When it comes to assassination, execution is everything.With no witnesses to testify otherwise, and no documentsto the contrary, Hadrian seized the reins of the RomanEmpire. His claim to the imperial purple, a last-minute writof adoption, was as thin as the vellum it was scribbled on. Toavoid civil war, the legions rallied behind him. After thedeaths of four opposing senators, the surviving majority gavetheir unanimous consent.On the site of the Golden Milestone, the geographiccenter of the world from which all distance was measured,Hadrian built a column commemorating the former emperor’s conquests and with great ceremony, buriedTrajan’s ashes at the foot of the monument.Then, reversing everything Trajan had fought for,Hadrian issued a confounding decree.

Status quo

might beLatin, but it was not his credo. The empire, he said, wasswollen to the point of bursting. Rome was overextended, her borders too vast to maintain. Where Trajan had spent hislifetime burning the benefits of civilization across the sacredgroves of ungrateful barbarians, the new ruler would shrink the empire. He would set free those who could never begoverned, and build a wall around those who could.