Julian Vance was an American graduate student studying the ruins of Cabira. Then he opened his eyes in 72 BC—inside the body of an unknown provincial, naked among the dead as a Roman army put the palace of Mithridates to the torch.
Mistaken for a slave and given the name Calabis, Julian survives by using the one advantage he can trust: a linguist's ear, sharpened by the borrowed instincts of his new body. But knowledge of the future is not a blueprint. Rome is ruled by patronage, debt, ambition, and the sword, and every step upward binds him to men who may destroy the Republic—Lucullus, Pompey, Cicero, Catiline, and the rising generation that will one day make Augustus possible.
From a legion's baggage train to the streets of Rome and the battlefields of the Black Sea, Calabis must build a Roman identity without losing the American mind beneath it. To protect the people he loves, he will bargain with nobles, outwit kings, and command soldiers in wars history says have already been decided.
The Republic is dying. Julian knows what comes next. The question is whether he can survive long enough to change it.