Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing Vitruvian Man comes from a description by the ancient Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who wrote the only major work on architecture or engineering to survive from classical antiquity.

Vitruvius remains a mystery. We know he was not wellborn and that he was exceptionally well educated. Yet, he held the position of military engineer under Julius Caesar and took part in many of Caesar’s campaigns. He also counted Octavian as his patron later in life.

This novel imagines the early life of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio as he might have told it in his memoirs, and as he might have lived it in the shadow of monumental events.

It begins as 18-year-old, where Vitruvius’s comfortable world shatters when his father is murdered while in Rome, seeking money to repay loans on the family farm and land.

In his father’s possessions, Vitruvius finds a mysterious scroll which places he and his family in mortal danger.

Vitruvius travels to Rome with his tutor’s niece to secure money to keep his family’s land and to grapple with his father’s murder.

Those who sent the scroll pursue them, and he must somehow disentangle his family from Republic politics and avoid the executioner’s noose.

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