iMPERIUM SOLIS

The Empire of the Sun

A.D. 363, when Julianus the Emperor discovered America

A.D. 363, June 26, on the desert plain of Ctesiphon in present-day Iraq, a bloody battle is being fought between the Roman legions, commanded by the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus and the Persian ranks led by King Shapur II.

The encounter is turning in favour of the Romans when a sudden counterattack by the Persian cavalry, composed of the formidable cataphracts, creates confusion in the rear. The emperor, warned of the sortie, doesn’t hesitate to intervene in person. He mounts a horse but in his haste, he fails to put his armour on.

His intervention on the battlefield is nevertheless crucial: the legionaries are relieved to see him fight in their midst and they drive back the Persians who retreat in disorder. Julian is by this time certain of victory. Soon he will fully conquer the East and lead the legions of Rome beyond the gates of India. His desire to equal the feasts of Alexander the Great seems at this point to be fulfilled but the elation only lasts a few moments because a javelin hurled unexpectedly hits him on his right side. Julian falls from his horse seriously injured; his soldiers come to his aid and carry him unconscious to his tent where he regains consciousness and would like to go back and fight but his strength abandons him and, after a brief but lucid agony, breathes his last.

At least this is what everyone believes but History, led by Fate, has suddenly changed its course.

Already in his youth, a benevolent divinity had appeared to him announcing that the weapon of a traitor would struck him in battle but that on that day she would have saved his life. The price to pay, however, would be high: give up the throne and flee abroad, towards the remote and unknown regions of the Far West, only there would his destiny be fulfilled. Julianus the Emperor would be taken into Heaven as a divinity after reaching the place where the Unconquered Sun God, his protector, goes to retire at the end of the day.

Having fled from Ctesiphon under a false identity, Julian consequently undertakes a journey full of dangers but he can count on a loyal friend, the imperial legate Lucius Domitius Clarus to whom, before embarking on the expedition against the Persians, he entrusted command of a special legion composed of more loyal soldiers, secretly sent to the island of Hibernia on the border with the Far West. In that distant land, Lucius will have to await the arrival of the emperor to brave the Ocean with him and reach, on a large fleet, the legendary island of Meropides.

Both will have to face well-trained and insidious enemies, unknown ferocious peoples, as the stakes are high: reach the home of the Sun God and, with his benevolence, found a new Empire of Rome beyond the Ocean.