The Forum filled up faster than I expected.
Romans loved spectacle. Always have. Give them a reason to stop working and watch something — anything — and they'll show up like it's a festival.
By the time the sun was fully up, there were thousands of them. Merchants. Slaves. Patricians in clean togas. Veterans with missing arms and missing eyes. All of them staring at the Senate steps. Staring at me.
Nero. The monster. The madman. The boy who burned Rome.
Except I wasn't any of those things anymore.
Scarface leaned close. "Galba's army is two miles out. Maybe less."
"Good. Let them wait."
"You're really going to talk to them? Now?"
I looked out at the crowd. Thousands of faces. Thousands of stories. Thousands of people who'd been told to hate me.
"Scarface. You know how you win a city?"
"With an army?"
"No. With a story. Rome doesn't care who's strongest. Rome cares who tells the best lie."
"And what lie are you going to tell?"
I smiled. "The truth."
I stepped forward.
The crowd went quiet. Not completely — crowds never do. But quiet enough. Quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Quiet enough to hear a dead man speak.
"People of Rome."
My voice carried. Forty years of shouting over battlefields will do that.
"You know my name. You know the stories. The fire. The mother. The lyre."
A murmur ran through the crowd. The old wounds. The old hatreds.
"They told you I was a coward. They told you I was a monster. They told you I ran away when Galba's army marched on the city."
I paused.
"They were right."
More murmurs. Louder this time.
"I was a coward. I was a monster. I did run away. All of it. Every word you've heard about me — it's true."
A woman in the front row spat on the ground.
I didn't blame her.
"But here's what they didn't tell you. Here's what the Senate won't say, what Galba won't admit, what no one in this city has the guts to speak out loud."
I walked to the edge of the steps. Closer to them.
"The man who ran away? He's dead. Killed himself in a villa outside Rome. Put a knife to his own throat because he couldn't take it anymore."
Shock. Confusion. They didn't know what to do with this.
"The man standing here now? Someone else. Someone who's been dead a lot longer than Nero. Someone who came back — for reasons I don't understand — to fix this."
A man shouted from the crowd. "Who are you, then?"
Good question.
"I'm the man who built this city. Not the bricks. Not the marble. The idea of it. The idea that Rome could be more than a collection of squabbling families. That Rome could rule the world."
Another shout. Louder. Angrier. "You're Nero!"
"I'm Caesar."
The word hung in the air.
Caesar. The name every Roman knew. The name that meant conqueror. Dictator. God.
"You're insane," someone yelled.
"Probably. But insane doesn't mean wrong."
I pointed east. Toward the dust cloud. Toward Galba.
"Out there, five thousand men are marching on this city. They think they're coming to save you. They think they're coming to kill a monster."
I lowered my arm.
"They're wrong. They're coming to steal from you. To take your grain. Your money. Your freedom. Galba doesn't care about Rome. Galba cares about Galba."
The crowd was listening now. Really listening.
"I've been in this body for four days. Four days. And in that time, I've done more for Rome than Galba has done in sixty years."
"What have you done?" The same woman. The one who spat.
"I stopped a Senate that was selling you out. I held a villa against five thousand men with two hundred Germans. I crawled through a sewer to stand here — in front of you — and tell you the truth."
"The truth?" She laughed. Bitter. "What truth?"
"The truth that no one in power will ever save you. Only you can save you. Only we can save us."
I climbed down the steps. Walked into the crowd. My Germans tensed — but I waved them back.
Let them see me. Let them touch me if they wanted. I wasn't afraid.
"I'm not asking you to love me. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm asking you to fight."
"Fight?" The spitting woman again. "With what? My bare hands?"
"If that's what you have. But you have more. You have numbers. You have walls. You have something Galba doesn't have."
"What?"
"A reason to win."
I stopped in the middle of the Forum. Turned in a slow circle. Made sure every single person there could see my face.
"Galba's men are fighting for money. For promises. For a Senate that will forget their names the moment they stop being useful."
I pointed at my chest.
"I'm fighting for this. For Rome. For the idea that a city can be more than dirt and stone and dead men's dreams."
A veteran stepped forward. Old. One arm missing. A scar across his whole face.
"I fought for Caesar," he said. "The real Caesar. In Gaul. At Pharsalus." He squinted at me. "You talk like him."
"I am him."
He stared for a long time. Then — slowly — he nodded.
"Then I'll fight for you again."
One voice. One old man with one good arm.
But that's all it takes.