Chronicles of the Houses of Darkness - The Tin Road

Lucius Cornelius Maluginens and Livia minor, two young people eager to make their own wealth in the lucrative Tin trade.

Lucius, the penniless son of a family of traders headquartered in the city-port of Gades, and a descendant of one of the most ancient patrician family of Rome.
Livia Minor, heiress to a banker family of Padua and the fortune of Marcus Livius Drusus, the tribune whose assassination in 91 B.C. had precipitated the great civil war of Rome.

To open the Tin Road, they will follow Caesar's armies in Spain and Gaul.
To secure political cover in a treacherous Rome, they will ally with Cornelius Balbus, Caesar's Praefectum Fabrum, a Gaditanese himself, a friend of Pompey and Crassus, a man that is at the heart of their triumvirate.
To buy safe passage, they will negotiate with Gallic mariners: the Veneti of Armorica, and Celtic warriors: the Atrebates of Belgica And Britannia.

But little do they know that the game has been rigged... that the Republic itself has been rigged by the great Houses of Darkness... unseen, unchallenged in their obscure dwellings, hid behind the scenes of Human history.
They are the cannibalistic shadow walkers... The immortal owners of the great families of Rome, owners of the patrician Claudi, Fabi, Aemili, Manli and Valeri... of the legendary Juli... and of the plebeians Licini, Pompei and Caecili...

Forever hungry, they have shaped the Republic and enjoyed the fruits of its incredible expansion... until a man, a genius and a populist, will cross the Rubicon, gut its institutions and blow up their construct.

This story spans the years 61 B.C. to 49 B.C., from Julius Caesar's praetorship in Spain, to his crossing of the Rubicon, incorporating flash backs into the history of Rome and in-depth historical timelines.
It is not an "Alternative History" fiction, as it intends, to the best of the author's knowledge, to remain strictly historically accurate. Its themes are republican politics, metallurgy and maritime trade.