It's 81 BC, and ancient Rome is under the control of the drunken bloodthirsty dictatorship of Cornelius Sulla. There were three things you could do - be on Sulla's side and live, oppose him and get exiled, or oppose him and get your head stuck on a pike in the Forum. Cato the Younger, fourteen years old, was taken under Sulla's wing for a front-row seat to the bloodbath. 

Rome's problems didn't end when the dictator drank himself to death. 

Spartacus, a former slave and legionnaire, raised a huge rebel army in the city's back yard, the renegade general Sertorius had essentially taken over Spain, and annoying old Mithridates was taking a third swing at the Roman pinata. 

Cato the Younger found plenty of opportunity for career advancement in these tense times. 

But so did Julius Caesar. The two of them were now on a collision course. 

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