From the pen of the international bestselling author of The Last
Legion comes a new political thriller set during the tempestuous final
days of Julius Caesar's Imperial Rome.
It is March in the year 44 BC. The Roman Empire stretches from
modern-day Syria in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Gaius
Julius Caesar, Pontifex Maximus, dictator in perpetuity, indomitable
military leader who has subjected much of the known world to Roman law,
is fifty-six years old. He is at the height of his power; his reign is
supreme and his reach immense. Or so it appears. In truth, Caesar is
exhausted and ill, trapped in the prison of his own nightmares. His
divine missions--to end the bloody season of fratricidal wars, to
reconcile warring factions, to singlehandedly save Roman
civilization--may be too great for one man.
The tide is turning against Caesar and there are those who conspire
against him. They accuse him of being a tyrant. They say that when he
dissolved the alliance with Pompey the Great at the river Rubicon, he
put an end to liberty within the Republic. Caesar has resisted the
attempts of his betrayers to bring him down; still, he cannot resist
forever. His power is being drained and it seems that nothing can save
him, not Publius Sextius--his most loyal centurion and comrade, who is
racing toward Rome in an attempt to prevent his assassination--or his
devoted wife, Calphurnia; not even the attentions of his lover Servilla.
The soothsayer's prophecies will out and when the Ides of March have
passed, the world will have changed forever.
