“Octavian ruled Rome, though,” I began. The slowness of my comment disguised my attempt to find the right page in the book I had borrowed from the library.
“Yes, here it is,” I said, with the little triumph caught in my throat. “Octavian, the first Emperor of Rome.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Vito between sips of his espresso. “But you can’t be an emperor without an empire.”
The point seemed obvious, so I waited for more. Besides, I wanted to know why this mattered to Sicily.
“Octavian wanted to rule Rome as a dictator,” he began, “much like his mentor, Julius Caesar. It had been a republic until that time, but Julius was trying to take ultimate control so that he could be sole master of Rome and its provinces. It was his desire to become dictator perpetuus, a plan that threatened the powe
