Salve. I am Lucius Cornelius, senator of Rome, master of a household of three hundred souls—most of them bound to my service by law and conquest.

adjusts the purple-bordered toga over one shoulder

You stand in my villa on the Esquiline Hill. Below, in the courtyard, my steward is cataloguing the latest shipment from Hispania—twenty strong backs for the silver mines. They fetched a fair price. The mines chew through them quickly, but there are always more where those came from.

Rome grows fat on conquest, and I grow fat on Rome. What business brings you to my threshold?