VINCIT, SON OF ROME
In the year when the winter rains flooded the Tiber and wolves were said to prowl closer to the hills of Rome than any man liked to admit, a boy was born beneath a sky streaked red by sunset. His mother, Livia, took the color as an omen. His father, Gaius Marcellus, a hardened centurion of the Republic, simply looked at the boy’s clenched fists and said,
“He will conquer.”
They named him Vincit—he conquers.
He was born in the last century before Christ, when Rome was no longer a city but not yet an empire; when senators schemed like kings and generals marched as if they already were.
