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The clatter of picks and ads is on stone was almost more than Quintus could bear.

Dozens upon dozens of them, each held by an enslaved man sweating in the summer heat of Latium,

crunched into the dark basalt rock barring the road's passage through the hills.

This troublesome spot had left them two days behind schedule.

That was why Quintus was here now to see whether the

work gangs needed a little stiffening, or perhaps the overseers required additional motivation.

Quintus had largely selected the workforce after all. He ought to know them, and the other

public contractors with whom he had partnered on the building of the Via Appia, Rome's first

major road, left the handling of the laborers to him.

Some of those partners had provided nothing but capital, others access to gravel pits or

convoys of wagons. Quintus had provided the slaves, traveling along with the army on its last

big, successful campaign into Samnium. He and his father-in-law purchased them by the hundred.

The trick wasn't the bulk purchasing, though. It was judging the quality of the workers,

almost entirely men that he bought. Quintus's way was to level with them, to talk to them, man to man.

Their old life was over. They were going to be enslaved, and how that went depended largely on them.

Those who were willing to bargain were precisely the slaves he wanted. He would work them hard,

but treat them fairly. Those who cooperated would get their freedom when the project was over

and a head start on a new life. Maybe they would run crews of their own. There was always work

in Rome these days.

Quintus would help them find the right projects.

...