Chapter 61 - The Stone and the Nail

The years following the deaths of Crispus and Fausta were years of stone and silence. The Roman world was at peace, an iron peace enforced by a sole, undisputed Augustus who no longer trusted any man, least of all himself. The vibrant, dangerous intrigue of his court in Rome withered into the grim, fearful obedience of a court that now resided wherever the Emperor's work took him. He had purged his own house of the emotions and ambitions that had led to its ruin, and in the hollow space that remained, he poured all of his immense, restless energy into a single, all-consuming obsession: the building of a new world.