La decisión del César

The year 106 AD (859 *ab urbe condita*); Italica, Province of Baetica. Gaius Mummius Secundus has lost the election for the duumvirate three times, but he will not lose a fourth. His trump card will be to persuade Trajan—once the Dacian campaign concludes—to authorize a massive engineering project for the greater glory of his hometown, something Rome has never achieved in nine hundred years: a monumental tunnel beneath a major river. Rome has built great bridges, but never a river tunnel. Secundus proposes connecting the banks of Italica and Hispalis via a tunnel beneath the Baetis River. The bureaucratic hurdles are immense, for no one believes in the project—not the curia of Italica, nor the proconsul of Baetica, nor the prefect of Rome, nor even Apollodorus of Damascus, the Emperor’s great architect. No one supports the project—save for one person, to everyone’s astonishment: Marcus Ulpius Trajan. He allows himself to be swayed by promises that his legacy will achieve immortality, comparable to the great pyramids of Egypt in the East. Compelled by the Emperor’s wishes, the opposition seeks to sabotage the tunnel project by proposing an equally complex alternative: a massive bridge over the Baetis—a river that is also a navigable waterway. Which will come to fruition: a tunnel or a bridge? The rift among engineers and politicians extends even to the imperial family in Rome—involving Hadrian and the Augusta Pompeia Plotina—placing Secundus and the Mummius clan (as well as the cities of Hispalis and Italica) under immense strain. Yet Secundus is prepared to sacrifice everything—absolutely everything—to his ambition for eternal glory.