In the darkness of a hut in a village in Thrace, a woman dies. She has just given birth to a fatherless child, who seems as destined as anyone in those distant lands, to suffer the usurpations of the barbarians who have long threaten the Eastern Roman Empire. But an old soldier snatches him from misery and takes him with him, raising him in the ranks of the army. That child destined for poverty will become a centurion, and then, accomplice a twist of fate, he will come to wear the purple in Constantinople. But an enemy, closer than he thinks, will thwart his good intentions. This is the story of Phocas, one of the most evil and bloodthirsty emperors that Roman history remembers.