It is the tenth volume of Roberts's SPQR series, featuring Senator Decius Metellus.

He is campaigning in the Forum when a young aristocrat loudly denounces him for alleged fraud and theft while in office on Cyprus, and boldly threatening to prosecute him for said acts.

Decius consults Sallustius, who gives him a small lecture about the Republic's political landscape: for generations, the great aristocratic families of Rome have been slowly shrinking, more dependent on adoption to sustain their numbers, and gradually losing their hold on the highest offices of state which they consider to be their birthright.

Now, with Caesar's power, wealth, and popularity growing on a daily basis, these aristocrats are being pushed to increasingly desperate lengths.

Sallust confides that he was a guest at several dinner parties at which schemes were discussed to seize control of the State; the young man was to have been the figurehead, and popular support was supposed to have been further mobilized by proposing a mass cancellation of debts.