James Mace

The year is 115 A.D. After two years of conquest, Emperor Caesar Traianus has annexed both Armenia and vassal kingdoms of northern Mesopotamia. His gaze turns south, his armies poised to march down the Tigris and Euphrates.

For twelve years a disgraceful pall has hung over the Roman Empire. Trouble along the Germanic frontier forced an abrupt end to Emperor Domitian’s war against King Decebalus of Dacia.

Four years after their departure for the east, the armies of Rome are bloodied and exhausted. Their victories against the Parthian Empire came at great cost.

It is July, 67 AD. The brutal, 47-day siege of the rebel stronghold of Jotapata, in Galilee, has ended. The Roman armies of Vespasian destroyed the city and captured the leader of the resistance, Josephus ben Matthias....

A year has passed since the end of the Gallic rebellion of Sacrovir and Florus. Retribution has been exacted, and the province is at peace once more. And yet, there are some who escaped Rome's justice....

It is January of 1879. While three columns of British soldiers and their African allies cross the Uminyathi River to commence the invasion of the Zulu Kingdom....

The entire Roman Empire held its collective breath as Germanicus and Arminius faced each other in what would become the most brutal and savage campaign....

It’s been forty years since the Roman conquest of southern Britannia. The hostile western regions are at last subdued and twenty years have passed since the cataclysmic Iceni Rebellion in the east.....

In January 1879, three columns of British soldiers under the command of Lord Chelmsford, commenced the invasion of the Zulu Kingdom. The southern No. 1 Column led by Colonel Charles Pearson advances on the old mission station at Eshowe....

During the five decades since the Treaty of Rhandeia ended the War of Armenian Succession, an uneasy peace has existed between the Roman and Parthian Empires.

The year is 68 A.D., and the vast Roman Empire is in chaos. Provinces are in rebellion, while Emperor Nero struggles to maintain the remnants of his political power, as well as his last shreds of sanity. In the province of Hispania, the governor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, marches on Rome....

The year is 31 AD. It is five years into the Judean governorship of Pontius Pilate and the province ever stands on the edge of a knife. The Jewish religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, use their patronage with the Emperor to vent the slightest grievance....

It is December 1878, and war looms on the horizon in South Africa. British high commissioner Sir Henry Bartle-Frere seeks to dismantle the powerful neighboring kingdom of the Zulus....

Following the assassination of Emperor Gaius Caligula in AD 41, his uncle, Claudius, assumed the imperial throne. After establishing his legitimacy and stabilizing his position with the Roman Senate and people, he looks to legitimize himself militarily....

In the aftermath of the Battles of Khambula and Gingindlovu, a lull fell over the war-torn Zulu Kingdom. Though British forces under Lord Chelmsford emerged victorious during both encounters, earlier defeats, casualties, and supply shortages required them to withdraw back into Natal....

On the mist-shrouded Isle of Hibernia, now known as Ireland, 26 years have passed since the murder of the high king, Fiacha Finnolach. The usurper Elim of Ulster’s promises of peace and prosperity have come to naught, as drought and famine afflict the land....

The year is AD 66, and the Roman province of Judea has exploded in rebellion. Far from being a revolution of unified peoples, the various Jewish factions of Sadducees, Zealots, Sicarii, and Edomites are in a state of civil war....

Gaius Silius, legate of the 20th Legion, is concerned that the barbarians - though shattered by the war - may be stirring once again....

In the year 28 AD the people of Frisia, a previously loyal province, were suffering under the oppression of the Roman magistrate, a former Centurion named Olennius. So blinded by greed had he become that he taxed the populous well beyond their means to produce....

Since the reign of Emperor Tiberius, an uneasy peace has existed along the Danube frontier between the various Sarmatian tribal kingdoms to the north and the Roman Empire to the south.