Athene's Prophecy.

A young Roman soldier, Gaius Claudius Scaevola, has a dream in which Pallas Athene gives him three tasks: to become a strategist, to build a steam engine, and to prove the earth goes around the sun. What Gaius is not told is that what he really has to do is to save two civilizations, the first to get the means to save the second, which happens to be Earth that was wiped out in the late 23rd century following misuse of temporal messaging. Scaevola has already met three people who will have a great influence on his future: Tiberius, the current Princeps, who has given Scaevola his cognomen together with orders to do something spectacular from what he will learn from Timothy on Rhodes; Caligulae, who seems to be quite erratic, and the stuttering Claudius, who seems to have taken a liking to him.

Athene has given Scaevola some clues about his future, and as they start to come true, Scaevola begins to take the tasks seriously, but gets nowhere. Caligulae becomes Princeps, and seems to be playing with him, until suddenly he is made Tribunus laticlavius in Legio XII Fulminata, and finds himself under the nominal command of a drunken Legatus. In Judea, a new religions is emerging, Christianity, while sections of the Jewish community are on the verge of revolt. Caligulae has apparently zero tolerance for outcomes that he dislikes, so Scaevola has to grow up, very fast.

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