Just Before Christ

Classical times – modern troubles

In the year 31 B.C., Manio Sempronius accidentally kills a senator and is sentenced to take his own life. Too cowardly to go through with it, he asks for his sentence to be changed to anything else, anything at all. So he is sent as a legionnaire to Thrace, the land where his father, Manio the Magnificent, forged his myth as a soldier. Manio is accompanied by his slave Agorastocles: a friend, a brother... and another burden. For Agorastocles has his own ambitions, which, like for every slave, can only be realized through his master. Meanwhile, Thrace itself has been quiet for decades, which is in part owed to it being run by an elderly, increasingly senile general more concerned with his daughter Valeria than matters of combat. Used to the constant buzz of Rome, Valeria has no trouble wrapping her dad around her finger. The arrival of Manio, however, will turn both the military stability of the area and the daily life of all stationed in the far-away military post upside down in record time.