The newly elected Emperor needed a successful military operation to survive. Britain was the chosen target. When all was ready, the famed Roman army faltered and refused to embark. The official reason was that the tough, professional citizen-soldiers feared to cross the Ocean even though armies under Julius Caesar had twice done so before. This book offers a different reason. The failure of male-dominated Roman planning to take into account the family concerns of ordinary soldiers almost broke the back of the Imperial project. Despite rigorous army discipline, long-service legionaries refused to leave their unofficial families alone on the Continent when they left for Britain for ever.
The reader will be held spellbound by this re-enactment of Roman history, seeing how Aurelius Victorinus of the Urban Cohorts, the embryonic police service of the City, became one of the instruments of the survival of the Emperor and the launching of the Invasion across the Ocean.