Gaius Galen is the 23-year-old narrator and a former Green chariot team faction rioter who profited from his unique ability to direct a mob against specific properties. For three years now he has been leading a respectable life, working for the Green faction at the Hippodrome as a procurer of track dirt, determined to hide his criminal past. But an anonymous powerful client forces Gaius to revive his unique skills leading a new street gang by threatening death for his friend’s daughter and everyone Gaius holds dear.

Major influences on Gaius are his abusive father, Gaius Galen Licinius the Elder, his friend Monaxius, his slave Tedius Afer and the repenting prostitute Messalina, who Gaius falls in love with just as he is extorted to return to rioting. He soon reconnects with the court eunuch Chrysanthos, a pivotal figure in Gaius’ life whom his father sent him to at age 10 intending his son to become a eunuch. (His father claimed he was just trying to scare Gaius with the prospect because he was a moody boy, though neither Chrysanthos or Gaius believed that.)

This aborted transformation had a shocking effect on Gaius, turning him from a shy boy into a rebellious street fighter to irritate his well-to-do father and counter his own self-doubt, which also manifested itself in his switching religions during this period from hist father’s orthodox Christianity to paganism, Arianism, Monophysitism, Judaism and back to orthodox Christianity. He was a wild mess from 12-20, also falling prey to mania at times during rioting, where he earned the nickname Wilder for his aggression as a street leader.

Straddling the world of street fighters and the wealthy, Gaius is funny, observant, cocky, tough, sensitive and caring. For the first time in his life, he must grow into responsibility to protect those he loves who are threatened by his client and those who follow him in the dangerous rioting, which still has a manic pull on him. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 12 when he reflects on his trajectory from shy boy to raucous street fighter …

Imagine being a moody boy and your father decides that you are unfit to be a man and would do better as a eunuch. He took my testicles in his hand, pinched them out like a pair of grapes and showed me where the cut would be made – not to remove them, just make them useless in atrophy. He was the paterfamilias who ruled his family, and Mother’s objections were useless. In the old traditions, which Father adhered to in most things, he could have killed me and would have suffered no ill because pater could do anything he wanted in his family. Same principle for an emperor and his people.

He has maintained, when he would speak about it, that it was only an attempt to scare me into becoming more manly and less shy, an out-of-date practice but not a dead one. But I have learned that Father is greedier than he is honest. Good eunuchs could make extraordinary connections – like Chrysanthos – that could have benefited him through me. Though it was illegal to neuter a pre-puberty boy and make a eunuch of him within the Roman Empire, it happened. There is good trade in importing eunuchs from other regions, because these odd fellows are in high demand, at court, in government and in the homes and enterprises of fine families. I was a thoughtful boy, and Father was, and still is, an unfeeling brute. I truly believe he would have enjoyed seeing my testicles pickled in a jar on his library shelf.

However much I hate to admit it, his plan worked, though not as he intended. The idea that he would even threaten such a thing turned my quiet moodiness into relentless anger against Gaius Galen Licinius the Elder. I was motivated to make him sorry he ever considered it. I took to destroying things because I could not bring myself to destroy him (I have thought seriously about it on several occasions). He lectured and punished. I ignored and went further – rebelling against the Orthodox religion he had us all embrace.

I’ve been a pagan. I announced it at dinner one night when I was 12. Father sputtered rage, slapped me senseless and locked me in my room for a week. Didn’t matter; I was happy to have found this way to disturb him.

Even as a younger Christian boy, I often admired Hellene gods doing fanciful things, Olympian snobs acting out their petulant rivalries at humanity’s expense. It seemed to me an easier thing to have hundreds of gods who really didn’t care a fig for you, than to have the one God who knew everything you did – even thought – and punished you accordingly. I thought maybe it was that God who sent me to be neutered.

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Gaius Galen, Protagonist