Since new documentation requirements and other nonsense have forced me to shut down my Patreon, I will return to posting spoiler-free snippets here on the blog.
Good news for our generous Patreon patrons and all readers is that our Patreon funding goal was reached, so a new illustrated Dominus novella will happen. But not after final Book 4 is published. The details and schedule for Book 4’s release will be announced soon, so stay tuned.
~200 words. Unedited and subject to change. Gaius’s POV.
~~~~~
Surrounded by a gang of his imperial guardsmen and dressed in his most regal toga, Marcus casually strolled down the wide walkway paved with travertine slabs, pointing out the features of whichever dear construction happened to catch his eye. A gilded portrait of that illustrious fellow, a bronze effigy of that dead chap. Statues of every fucking Roman prat who’d ever lived, it seemed. Fountains and sculptures and tall columns of colored foreign stone crowded the expansive complex. Marcus’s hilltop baths were a walled city within the capital, a playground for devotees of Aphrodite, Hygeia, Mercury, and Minerva. Emperor Trajan’s generous gift of opulent but cheap recreation for the urban mob. On holidays, the rabble wouldn’t pay a single piece of brass to soak their grimy arses in Marcus’s salubrious spa.
With unlimited resources and a patron who refused to acknowledge boundaries, Apollodorus had gone stark raving mad. Rome had always celebrated her profitable conquests with colossal, costly monuments, but no one celebrated with more outrageous vigor than Appy and dear, old Marcus. These enormous vulgar baths were bloody indescribable.
~~~~~
JPK
Comments