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10/07/2022

Newly appointed Optio Lucius Decimus Petronius landed in Caesarea on a tranquil sunny day in 132AD. Unfortunately, the weather provided no hint of what was to come, a storm that would rock the Roman army and spell the demise of the Jewish nation. Petronius recognised his youth would be a challenge as an Optio, but he could not have imagined what he would face in one of the Roman Empire’s most severe and bloody revolts.

The tides of this vicious conflict would see Petronius thrown against the heart of the insurrection and its enigmatic leader, Simeon bar Kokhba. His involvement is made more personal by his relationship with a Jewish girl from the Judaean Hills and the elusive Mordecai ben Zakkai, an agent for a small group of pacifist Jewish rabbis.

There would be no mercy in this contest; Jewish accounts tell of a land overflowing with blood. The war would affect or end countless lives, and Lucius Decimus Petronius would not be immune. The young optio of Legio X Fretensis will be forever changed by the horror of a genocidal war. Messiah! begins his story.