Title: Romanitas /
Authors: McDougall, Sophia.
Publisher: Orion,.
Year: 2005
Subjects: Rome Fiction.
Abstract: A slave waits to be crucified; a desperate young girl with strange abilities stalks through the streets of London; a gang of fugitives hides out in the Pyrenees, while on giant screens in every city, the world watches the funeral of the Imperial family's most glamorous couple. A single state holds absolute sway from the Eastern border of India across the Atlantic; magnetic railways span the globe and tunnels run beneath the Adriatic sea and the Strait of Gades. Slaves are constructing a giant bridge over the Persian Gulf. But as tensions with a rival Empire in the East escalate, the first rumblings of a world conflict are beginning to be felt. Meanwhile, only an overworked official doubts that the deaths of the Emperor's war-hero brother and his beautiful, charismatic wife were accidental. The sixteen-year-old heir to the throne is about to learn a secret that threatens the security of the greatest power on earth - and his own life. This is the Roman Empire. Now.