First Citizen of Rome

Synopsis

**SYNOPSIS**

Rome, 63 BC. The Republic is ailing, its streets poisoned by debt, conspiracy, and the ghost of a glory that never returns. Marcus Aurelius Corvus, a young senator from a house reduced to dust and debts, owns nothing but a sharp tongue, a keener memory, and the desperate will to rise. While Cicero thunders against Catiline and Pompey eyes the East, Corvus learns the true currency of power: not votes, but secrets. He builds a network of scribes, freedmen, and spurned wives who whisper where the eagles dare not fly. When civil war erupts between Caesar and Pompey, Corvus must choose a side without being crushed by either. He does not seek to bend history—only to survive its turning wheel, and to place himself at the centre of the new world that rises from the rubble of the old. But in a city where every friend is a future knife, and every triumph writes another name on the proscription list, the first citizen must be careful what he wishes to own.

**MAIN CHARACTERS**

- **Marcus Aurelius Corvus** – A poor, ruthless patrician senator whose oratory hides a calculating mind. His ambition is not to change Rome, but to inherit it.

- **Livia Drusa** – A senator’s widow with access to every salon and secret in the city; Corvus’s most dangerous ally and his most loyal enemy.

- **Quintus Fabius Rullus** – A blunt, honest soldier of the old school, whose loyalty to the Republic forces Corvus to confront the cost of his own cunning.

- **Tiro** – A freedman scribe, once Cicero’s property, now Corvus’s ears in every shadowed corridor of the Curia; his memory is a library, his discretion a fortress.

- **Gaius Scribonius Curio** – A brilliant, dissolute young tribune whose charm and debts make him both a weapon and a liability in Corvus’s game.