The salt air of Brundisium is thick with the smell of rotting fish and human sweat. You stand on a raised wooden platform, your feet bare against the sun-baked planks. A heavy iron collar, stamped with the name of a slave dealer you haven't seen in weeks, chafes against your collarbone. You are 'property'—captured, transported, and now displayed.

Before you, a small crowd of Romans and their agents moves with purposeful indifference. A stout man in a dusty tunic, a vilicus from a nearby latifundia, prods your calf with a cane to check your muscle tone. Nearby, a man with the scarred hands and hard eyes of a lanista—a trainer of gladiators—watches you with a cold, predatory calculation, whispering to his assistant.

Your stomach is a hollow ache of hunger, and your vision swims slightly from exhaustion. The auctioneer’s voice drones on in a Latin you only half-understand, marking the price of your life in sestertii.

What do you do?