Reborn In 3rd Century Rome with Future Industry

February 15, 220 AD, Civitas Aurelia, Gallia.

Four weeks had passed since the blocks of Lucius’s printing press kissed the ink, and by then, the province of Gaul was burning.

Thousands of copies of Marcus’s manifesto, *The Fallacy of the Guilds and the Virtue of True Industry*, had flooded the streets, taverns, and merchant squares of the territories.

What the magistrates had dismissed as the scribblings of a patrician boy had mutated into a wildfire.

The elite were facing a crisis... The manifesto was printed on cellulose paper.

It was a material cheap to produce, yet superior to papyrus, that the plebeians could afford to buy it.

For the first time in Roman history, revolutionary thought was not restricted to the conversations of senators.

It was mass-produced, and it was in the hands of the underclass!

Riding the wave of this truth, minor merchants, displaced artisans, and plebeians began to riot.

Guild warehouses in Civitas Aurelia were torched in the dead of night. Tax collectors were chased through the streets with cobblestones.

The ’Treason of the Forge’, as the magistrates had tried to label Lucius’s estate, was now being praised as a beacon of meritocracy.

It did not take long for the authorities to convene a council...

Within the heart of the capital, guarded by legionaries, the powerful men in Gaul gathered in the praetorium of Governor Marcellus.

Seated around an obsidian table were several magistrates, Guild Master Spurius, and Praefectus Claudius, the commander of the city’s military garrison.

Governor Marcellus slammed his goblet onto the table, his face flushed. "If we do not stamp out this poison while it is localized, it will fracture the economy! We must petition the Emperor. We need three legions to march into every district infected by this filth and put these commoners to the sword!"

Praefectus Claudius, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his breastplate, let out a scoff.

The commander looked at the Governor as if the man had lost his mind.

"Are you devoid of tactical sense, Marcellus?" Claudius demanded. "You want to march imperial troops through our streets to butcher our taxpayers? The plebeians are furious. If you unleash the legions on them, you won’t crush a riot... you will ignite a civil war! Furthermore, the auxiliary troops have brothers and fathers in those mobs. You order them to draw swords on their blood, and they will turn those swords on you."

Spurius, the Guild Master whose monopoly was disintegrating, slammed his fist onto the table.

He was sweating, his tunic clinging to his skin.

"They are destroying my warehouses!" Spurius shrieked. "They are burning my carts! We must cleanse the disease! Send the troops into the slums and cull the herd!"

Claudius rolled his eyes. "Tell me, Spurius. When my men march into the lower districts, how do you propose we differentiate between a baker who read a piece of paper and a loyal citizen trying to buy bread?"

Spurius did not hesitate. His eyes were wide. "Nail them all to crosses along the Aurelian Way! The crows do not care who they eat, and the survivors will learn their place!"

The suggestion caused several of the magistrates to recoil in horror.

Even in the calculus of the Roman Empire, crucifying thousands of taxpayers to protect a blacksmith’s profit margins was a suicide!

The voice of reason broke through the shouting.

It came from Magistrate Flavius, a patrician who had listened to Marcus beg for a priesthood.

Flavius stood up, smoothing the folds of his toga.

"Have any of you paused to consider the intellect of the boy we are dealing with?" Flavius asked. "We are sitting here screaming about riots, ignoring the architect of this nightmare. Lucius of the House of Cassius built a copying machine. He took the poorest rabble of the city and armed them with weapons we cannot comprehend."

Flavius turned his gaze onto Spurius.

"If you had taken a breath to reflect on your greed, Spurius, you would realize that if you had not sent a mob of three thousand thugs to attack his gates, none of this would be happening! Every time you try to force your authority upon Lucius, it explodes in our faces!"

Flavius gestured to the manifesto resting on the table. "You tried to trap him with the Third Legion, and a thousand soldiers vanished in the gorge, swallowed by ’Alemanni raiders’ that left no footprints! The boy has outwitted you at every turn! What makes you think you can defeat him by starting a civil war? He will sell the mob the steel they use to burn your house down!"

Spurius lowered his head, his face pale and slick with sweat.

Governor Marcellus was a man bound by his ego.

The idea of the Roman state bowing to an Equestrian inventor operating a factory was an insult he could not stomach.

He stood up, towering over the table, his eyes burning with stubbornness.

"I refuse," Marcellus hissed. "I am the voice of the Emperor in this province! I will not cower before a boy who makes mud-paper and peddles treason! I will have my satisfaction. I will see the House of Cassius ripped out by the roots, even if I have to burn the province to illuminate the executioner’s block!"

With that declaration, the council remained fractured.

Some demanded a military crackdown.

Others suggested attempting to negotiate a peace with Lucius, hoping to buy access to his paper mills.

And sitting among the elite, a few magistrates had read Marcus’s manifesto.

They recognized the economic truth within the pages. They knew the era of the guild monopolies was ending, and the era of mechanized industry had arrived.

These men would not voice their dissent today, but they would become the backbone of Lucius’s empire from within the halls of Roman power.

For now, the arguments raged on in the praetorium.

...

After washing the soot and sweat of an engineering session from his skin, Lucius made his way toward the *triclinium* for a meal. He expected the dining room to be empty at this hour, save for a few servants preparing bread and olives.

As he pushed aside the curtain, he froze.

Sitting at the head of the table was his father, Cassius. Spread out before the patriarch were ledgers, production manifests from the forge, and a thumbed copy of Marcus’s manifesto.

What shocked Lucius was his father’s state. Cassius had aged a decade in the span of a few months.

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