The Annona
Rome eats because somebody signs for the missing grain.
- ~190 min
- 29117 words
- 78 scenes
- 15 branch points
- 7 endings
- Ostia and Portus, Roman Italy, spring to autumn 62 CE
2 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
Cover art · generated placeholder backgrounds and character art in-game · licensed music, credited in the build · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
Portus, spring 62 CE. Two hundred grain ships have gone down inside Rome's new imperial harbour, but Nero will not let the bread price rise. The capital survives on paper credit: promises against wheat not yet unloaded, warehouse receipts copied faster than wrecks can be counted, and wax tablets whose totals matter more than the bodies washing through the harbour mouth. Vibia Rufina is the freedwoman who keeps the tally at Horreum Aemilianum. Her bronze measure decides whether a shipmaster lost grain to weather or stole it on the quay. Quietly, she has been making certain that every cargo comes up a little short. Another 2,400 sesterces will buy her brother off a rowing bench on the Tiber. The hand that freed Vibia still owns her mornings. Quintus Naevius Postumus, guild patron and former master, has turned her immaculate tallies into a market in grain that never arrived. When an investigator from the prefect of the annona begins matching paid receipts to drowned hulls, Postumus prepares to surrender Vibia as the lone thief. She needs the man who taught her the system in order to survive the system's accusation. She also needs Kallias, a Greek shipmaster whose stubbornly honest manifest could ruin every profitable liar in Portus, and Marcella, a wealthy widow who owns two ships, commands rooms barred to freedwomen, and cannot be seen desiring one without making her property vulnerable to male kin. From the wreck quay to the measurers' guild hall, from a widow's shuttered dining room to a warehouse burning hot enough to erase public memory, The Annona is a long historical drama about patronage as ownership and mercy as falsified arithmetic. Crime, hunger, enslavement, addiction, bodies, and public money remain visible in the account. Desire stays in the pressure of a palm against wax and in who waits outside a closed door; sex cuts away. The final struggle is not over whether the ledger tells the truth, but whose life the city will accept as the price of having believed it. Seven materially different endings ask what freedom can mean when even a freed person's name is collateral.
Content notice
- slavery and coerced labour
- institutional hunger and poverty
- financial exploitation and debt
- graphic fire injuries and death
- assault and custodial violence
- alcohol misuse
- sexual content implied, cuts away
- class and gender subjugation
- corpse recovery and drowning aftermath
- bigotry shown through behaviour; no slurs written out
Cast
- V Vibia Rufina protagonist; freedwoman and chief tally keeper at Horreum Aemilianum no portrait yet
- K Kallias of Rhodes Greek shipmaster of the Thaleia; honest witness and possible lover no portrait yet
- A Aemilia Marcella wealthy widow and owner of the Concordia and Ceres Secunda; possible lover no portrait yet
- Q Quintus Naevius Postumus Vibia's former owner, continuing patron, and patron of the measurers' guild no portrait yet
- G Gaius Vibius Felix Vibia's younger brother; enslaved rower on a Tiber grain lighter no portrait yet
- A Aulus Calpurnius Labeo deputy of the prefect of the annona; investigator and correct antagonist no portrait yet
- N Nicanor Barba freed porter and steward of the Horreum labour guild no portrait yet
- D Drusilla enslaved tablet runner at Horreum Aemilianum and keeper of its unofficial memory no portrait yet