Eventful times

Ever wanted to hear why I write what I write? How it came about? My inspiration for certain things? Ever want to ask questions or just chat or perhaps buy books or get them signed? Well there’s a few opportunities coming up this year, and I thought I’d blog just to keep you all up to date.

The first one’s coming up in March.

So it costs £15 to become a Friend, which you can do HERE. For your 15 pounds you not only get to help support a volunteer run library, which is worthy on its own, but you get to come to this and other events, and at this one you get all this:

• Beer from the keg, with the first drink free
• Sausages from a local excellent manufacturer
• A talk from yours truly, in costume, as well as a Q&A
• A short dramatization of part of Caligula, performed by local actors
• Music
• A raffle with some great prizes
• A Roman fun quiz
• Signed books
• The opportunity to pop out for a beer with me afterwards and talk books and history

I highly recommend becoming a friends, as other events are worthwhile too. Last year they had the wonderful Imogen Robertson. Bedale, North Yorkshire, just off the A1 on Weds 6th March. Hope to see you there. It’ll be a great night.

Then after Bedale, there’s Selby Library in May, in which I’m doing an evening alongside Sharon Bennett Connolly.

Just £5 for two talks, refreshments and a book signing. And perhaps Sharon and I can answer a few questions for you too.

And then thirdly, in June there is Eboracum festival

That’s in York, from Friday 31st May to Sunday 2nd June. A weekend of Roman reenacment and parades, events and more, which will include a number of authors including yours truly in an author marquee to sell and sign books and talk the hind leg off a donkey. If you want to stay in York for the weekend’s festivities, get onto booking accommodation early, as it fills up and gets expensive really quickly.

So there you go. Three different events to come see  me at, and I’d love to see you at them all.

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Colossus: Stone and Steel by David Blixt

Every now and then you discover a book that has somehow completely passed you by. I generally like to think I’m aware of the better releases in the Roman genre. I write in it, so I keep my eye on it, of course. I became aware of Blixt and his books through mututal connection. I write books with the historical fiction collective known as H360. So does David. We’ve not worked on a project together yet, but there is that connection, and I discovered in looking at his Verona series that he also has a Roman series.

Now the H360 team don’t take on bad writers, so my interest was truly piqued. I opened the book not knowing what to expect. Sometimes I will read a book purely on the author’s name, sometimes on the title and sometimes (yes I know they say you shouldn’t) on the cover., without reading even a basic blurb. Consequently I had no idea what Colossus: Stone and Steel was about other than it was Roman and written by David Blixt.

Pleasant surprise time. Stone and steel drew me in and kept me reading at any given opportunity until I hit the end and wished I had time to start the next book. Stone and Steel was simply an excellent book.

We start with excitement and atmosphere in first century Judea. The characters are fictional but very realistic and strong, and I was being quickly drawn in when I read a name, made instant connections and realised we were reading about the writer Josephus, one of my fave personalities in ancient Rome. In fact, I had toyed with writing the story of Flavius Josephus myself, and it was a project in a shelf somewhere. Glad I never tried, because I couldn’t do him the justice Blixt does.

You know why? Because this book is partially about Vespasian and the Flavian family, and Rome and its pernickety emperors and implacable consuls. But it is more about the Jewish people in Roman Judea and their struggles against sometimes Rome but more often each other. And while I know imperial Rome quite well, my familiarity with ancient Israel is less than fragmentary. So this book really struck me perfectly. It was at once familiar and strange, Roman and Jewish, imperial and rebellious. Blixt shows a deep understanding of the time and culture and displays a most impressive ability to portray this in fiction.

So now you know this is about the Flavians and Josephus and the Jewish War. And for those who  know the history I will also add the name Jotopata. This is the tale of brothers and friends and family on both sides in a war that no one really thinks can do any good. This is a tale of internecine warfare, of the unstoppable war machine and the uncrushable Jewish spirit. It is the story of a brutal siege and of cultures clashing.

Essentially, Stone and Steel is well-written, beautifully researched, clever, informative, atmospheric and a must read for every fan of the genre. The characters are fully fleshed-out, the action exciting, the history accurate. The book ranks up easily along with the very cream of Roman fiction. I heartily recommend it.

Read Blixt’s book. You won’t regret it.

Competition Time

Do you want to win a collection of Roman goodies?

Do you?

Well here’s your chance. One lucky winner can get their hands on this amazing prize:

And all you have to do to win this prize is to upload to my Facebook Page a photo of you with a copy of Caligula somewhere interesting. That’s right. Just post your pic here, and you’re in with a chance to win. It can be a hardback, paperback or ebook with the cover showing, I don’t care. Here’s my feeble effort, but I have to try, coz if I won, the postage would be REALLY cheap…

I know. The expression. I look like an axe murderer. But that’s just the terrifying thought of having to let this lot go: Here’s what’s in the prize:

Signed copies of the first three Praetorian novels

Roman ‘as’ coin of Caligula, obverse Caligula with head bare, reverse Vesta seated.

CD of the album ‘Bloom’ by the excellent band ‘Caligula’s Horse’ AND the DVD of the classic BBC series ‘I Claudius’. Note that the DVD is region 2…

A bottle of excellent red wine made from the same Aglianico grape and in the same locale as the ancient Falernian wine, the slopes of Mount Falernus in Campania.

AND… Caligula himself as used in my various promotional photos over the year

That’s the prize. I hope I win it! But it’ll probably go to one of you lucky people. The winner (the most interesting pic) will be chosen by an independent celebrity, and not myself, to avoid any preferential treatment. The winner will be drawn on Friday 21st of December, so get thinking and photographing. And, of course, if you haven’t bought and read Caligula yet, now is the best time ever.

Good luck everyone.

Caligula – from the horse’s mouth

Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Well, actually, that was Lady Caroline Lamb describing Lord Byron. But it got your attention…

So I don’t often blather about my own books on this blog, but today is release day for the paperback of Caligula. And while like every author I love books to sell for obvious reasons, this is the first book I’ve sold that you can readily buy in bricks-and-mortar bookshops. And the success of Caligula will determine how many sequels I get to write. Caligula is out there, and Commodus is coming in spring, but there could be two more. If you lovely people buy Caligula, that is.

Caligula. A new telling of an old, old story.

Rome 37AD. The emperor is dying. No-one knows how long he has left. The power struggle has begun.

When the ailing Tiberius thrusts Caligula’s family into the imperial succession in a bid to restore order, he will change the fate of the empire and create one of history’s most infamous tyrants, Caligula.

But was Caligula really a monster?

Forget everything you think you know. Let Livilla, Caligula’s youngest sister and confidante, tell you what really happened. How her quiet, caring brother became the most powerful man on earth.

And how, with lies, murder and betrayal, Rome was changed for ever . . .

So now is the time. If you like your Roman history, try Caligula. And watch out on my social media for the next week for one heck of a competition to win some AMAZING goodies. Wander in to your local book store and order it. Or go online and buy it. Christmas is coming up. I bet your dad would love to read a juicy tale about Rome’s most infamous emperor. Heh heh heh.

Caligula is available in paperback (or hardback) with free worldwide delivery from Book Depository here.

The kindle edition is available here (UK and Commonwealth only, sadly not in the US)

Also available as an Audible audio book here. And really, it doesn’t get better than in the lovely tones of Laura Kirman.

That’s it, lovely people. All I have. Now off to potentially plot two more damned emperors.

🙂

Vale

Lemures – a short story for the Halloween season

Caius Attius Flaccus stood in the atrium of his villa and shuddered. Something ran up his spine like ice on bare flesh, making him quail and quiver on the spot.

He snarled at his own failings and took a step closer to the small impluvium pool, looking down into the gathered rainwater, disturbed by the occasional drip from the atrium’s sloping tile roof. A sad, slightly misshapen, warped face looked back up at him, and he resisted the urge to look away. Most often he looked away – almost always, in fact, he looked away – for that rippling reflection caused more than just a shudder.

The left ear was fine. A beautiful ear, even.  A classic example that would look fitting on a statue by Myron. The right? The right was a gnarled, curled thing. A hideous misshapen item, twisted at a young age with white-hot tongs. The nose was fine but, though his eyesight was more than adequate, those orbs were hard  to look at, pale and watery and with virtually no iris visible – the  result of having spent the first eleven years in a dark closet. The lips were thin, the bottom one jagged and mangled from all the biting where it had sobbed its woes into the ragged flesh, helping to endure the endless beatings.

And its skin… its skin so pale as to be almost translucent. The only colour to it was the veins criss-crossing that sallow parchment that coated its bones.

It was hideous.

He knew that, of course; knew he was unsightly and monstrous in the eyes of the world. On the odd occasions when Gaius was required to step outside the sumptuous villa and into the heart of the eternal city, no matter how much he kept to his litter and the four Numidian slaves, nor how much he played on the fact that he had been elected a pontiff this season and could cover his misshapen body and unsightly head with the white toga, the public would inevitably catch sight of him. Children would scream and women would hustle their young ones away from this despicable creature. Sometimes he wondered what he would have looked like if he’d been left to grow up like a normal boy. After all, all his deformities had been thrust upon him…

There it was again – that strange deep, guttural grating noise that had first caused him to stop as he passed through the atrium. How odd. Was one of his neighbours having works done at their domus at this time of night?

He spat reflexively at the biter taste of a name on his tongue and moved around to another side of the small pool, waiting until the ripples dwindled to look down into its damning depths.

Lucius Attius Flaccus. His father. If ever a man had needed another father, it was this poor, deformed soul. But he’d been stuck with Lucius, husband of Cornelia. He’d been a swine from the first day Caius remembered, and likely long before then. He had, after all, killed his wife when their baby boy was not quite two years old, flying into a rage over some imagined insult and beating her to death with a bust of his illustrious grandfather, smashing her skull to a pulp so that the brains had to be cleaned from every surface in the room. The bust had been sent to be re-chiselled, because he’d hit her so hard that he’d shattered the marble nose.

His mother. The only person who could have protected him from a monster of a father. None of the slaves would help, not that many lasted more than a season before the brutal beatings robbed them of their lives.

There was that odd grinding noise again, like the quern stones of Eurysaces’ bakery down the road. It really was odd. It must be coming from the direction of the Esquiline because he’d moved that way around the pool, and this time the sound was louder. Whoever it was was clearly most inconsiderate.

Outside, he could hear the traditional rites of the Lemuria – the exorcism of the restless dead from the homes of good Romans with prayers and offerings of beans – being carried out in other houses. But because no good Roman could observe a religious practice without the appropriate amount of debauchery, this hallowed rite was too often carried out in haste to make way for a lavish feast and possible an orgy with dancing girls, roasting oxen, prostitutes at a finger’s beckon and all the lascivious depth of Roman nobility!

Ha! Roman nobility! Caius’ father had been considered the very epitome of Roman nobility, even  as the neighbours were watching buckets of his wife’s brains being ferried outside and slopped into the drains.

Well Caius had carried out his own rite of exorcism three years gone, and had felt untroubled ever since. Certainly, he’d felt no urge to don a silly costume and start an orgy…

The grating again! Somehow it seemed even louder than the sounds of Rutilius’ debauched get-together next door.

The moon began to insist itself upon him in the dark reflection of his ruined face, and Caius moved to the third side of the impluvium pool to move out of its blinding silver light. His seething dark heart, born of so many years of imprisonment and stygian gloom, filled with spite as he remembered that night of the casting out.

The villa owners of Rome waved their expensive Arabian incense and spoke words to the counsellor Gods, offering beans and gold – for beans alone seemed so Plebeian to some of these people. They spoke the words by rote and offered set prayers handed to them on scraps of vellum. Not one of them had met the lemures – the spirits of the restless – who supposedly haunted their houses. And so they went about it as a common ritual.

Caius had had to do it for real. His lemure had been living, breathing and swinging knotted ropes. His father had been all too real. And he had not used beans to exorcise him.

One night, lurking in his dark alcove, Caius had finally summoned up the strength to do something about his predicament. Eleven years of torture had been enough. He had snapped. He had gone insane, yet was lucid enough to recognise the fact. He had scraped away the mortar and removed a brick from the wall of his cellar-prison, and when the slave had come to deliver his drab, pale dinner, he had hit the poor bastard with the brick, stoving in his skull. It was a low thing to do. The slave had really deserved saving, not a painful murder. But some things had to be done, and he had known the slave would not help him and risk offending his master. A slave rarely lasted six months in this villa.

Caius had emerged from the cellar with one single goal in mind. He’d found his father whipping a whore to death in his office. Caius cared not for the whore, of course, but the knowledge that his father was meting out yet more arbitrary agony had snapped his already fraying senses, and he’d had pulled an unlit torch from the wall, walked into the room, and begun the business of turning his father into little more than a piece of ragged meat.

He had not stopped the beating until his father was utterly unrecognisable. There was not an inch of skin left unmarked, and the head had gone, now just a wet mess of pink and white splayed across the bed. The whore had died in the process, catching many of the blows meant for her abuser. Caius had slowly returned to his senses, and had then begun the business of tidying up, with neither remorse nor regret tainting his heart.

Curiously, it had been the day of the Lemuria festival that day too, and apart from the slave assigned to feed and muck out Caius the villa was empty of staff, leaving the master of the house alone to abuse his whore unobserved. By the time the house’s major domo and the staff had returned just before First Watch the next morning, Caius had buried the smashed, pulped remains of his father and the broken whore under the flagstones of this very atrium, depositing the excess soil in the peristyle garden, disposing of the blood-and-brain-soaked upholstery in one of the ubiquitous piles of trash in the alley beside the domus. The room had been cleaned and dried and bore no sign of the bloody violence that had been perpetrated there, by a master against his whore or by a son against his father. The broken slave had gone into the ground with them, too, and it had been a work of supreme irritation putting the brick back into the cellar wall and cramming the powdered mortar around it, and then locking the cellar door from the inside and pushing the key back beneath it.

He had been found. He had been looked after. For three weeks the city was on alert, looking for the missing Lucius Attius Flaccus. But he had gone. Many said he had eloped with a whore, but those who knew Lucius and his dark tendencies doubted this. Caius had been consoled. His last living relative had gone and while he would inherit the domus, they commiserated, it would obviously be no replacement for a father. Idiots. If only they’d known.

Over the next half year, Caius had set his seal on his ownership of the Domus Attius. He became the master of his demesne. He treated his servants and slaves well, and they gradually overcame their fear of his physical deformities to accept him as a master with a great deal more respect than they’d shown his father.

There was that damned noise again! People had no consideration during a festival. It was almost certainly late night work in the bakery. He would have such a word with Eurysaces tomorrow! The jumped-up little ex-slave clearly did not know his boundaries.

Caius had changed things in the domus. He would not live in the room where his father had abused and murdered whores. He would not work in that office. The house had to be cleaned and redecorated.

But the most important change had been here in this very atrium.

For he would not have a statue of his despicable father glowering at him as he passed, standing so close to the secret burial place of the man it depicted. For Lucius had commissioned a life-sized replica of himself the year before he died, and it had stood proudly at the side of the atrium, watching as his son buried his mortal remains beneath the flags.

The statue had gone straight away, but not permanently. One never wasted good marble, after all. In response to a lifetime of abuse by the bastard, Caius had commissioned one of the better young artists of this generation to re-carve the statue into a smaller, more delicate one of Nemesis – the goddess of rightful vengeance.

He turned and smiled at Nemesis. It had been three years since he had buried the bodies and had that form reshaped. Three bodies, three years. Three years this very night, in fact.

His brow folded into a frown. There was something distinctly odd about the statue tonight. Perhaps it was his imagination, fuelled by the dancing lamplight? No, there was definitely something odd. For Nemesis was not a smiling goddess. And the somehow twisted face of the statue was grinning – a maniacal rictus that could not in any way be described as happy. Her eyes seemed tiny and set deep in a harsh face. This Nemesis was, frankly, hideous. As hideous as he himself.

He realised far too late where he had seen those features before.

The whore!

The whore his father had been abusing. The whore he had inadvertently – yet uncaringly – beaten to death as collateral in his father’s demise. The whore who was now the statue. The whore who was now Nemesis!

The marble hand closed around his throat.

Caius felt a panic the like of which he’d never before experienced. Only briefly, though. For that cold, unyielding marble hand gripped his windpipe and jerked him forward so that his head cracked against the grinning face. He chipped one marble tooth and three real ones.

He screamed.

There was no one around tonight. He always allowed the staff festival nights to themselves. And with the sheer noise emanating from other villas, no one heard or cared. He screamed and screamed, the shrieking descending first to a gurgle and then to a moan as the marble grip smashed his face into the whore’s horrifying visage again… and again… and again.

Finally, his body twitching in what he knew to be its death throes, Caius realised the statue had let go, and he had collapsed to the ground. His remaining eye stared up in blind, panicked confusion at the statue that had killed him. Once more it had revert to its divine polished glory. It was no longer the whore his father had abused and he had beaten to death. It was Nemesis, the lady of righteous vengeance, staring down at the bloody, dying heap of her murderer.

He felt cold. In the morning, the slaves would find him again, like they had three years earlier. But this time, he would be dead, having apparently battered his own brains out on a statue that had once been his father.

With a sigh, Caius Attius Flaccus expired atop the very slab that covered his erstwhile victims.

To some extent, it was a relief.

Happy Halloween, everyone (or if you’re an ancient Roman and it’s March, Happy Lemuria!)

Welcome to the Palladium

Ever heard of the Palladium? No, not the theatre, nor the metal. The ancient Palladium, I mean. Well oddly it’s cropped up twice recently for me, after never previously knowing anything of it. Firstly, when I was writing the H360 book A Song of War, and then more recently in my biography of Commodus (which will be out in April – nudges you towards the pre-order button.)

So what was the Palladium? Well, let’s go back into some mythology to find it. You’ve heard of Athena, right? Greek goddess, connected with Athens and owls, worshipped in Rome as Minerva, sprouted from the head of Zeus like a pretty and rather powerful boil? Well did you know that she was raised by the sea god Triton and raised alongside Triton’s daughter like a sister. That sister-friend was called Pallas, and one day when soft play went wrong, Athena accidentally killed Pallas. In her grief, she made a divine wooden likeness of Pallas. This, then, was the Palladium. But how does it fit into my tales?

Cassandra clinging to the Palladium in the temple in Troy (a painting in Pompeii)

Well, ‘A Song of War’ was the H360 tale of the fall of Troy, and it so happened that the Palladium fell from the heavens and landed in Troy, where it was worshipped, stored in the temple of Athena. So when we wrote of the sack and the fall of Troy, it inevitably involved researching  some of the greatest treasures and sacred objects of the city. As legend would have it, the Palladium survives the fall of Troy. In our tale, the team told of Odysseus and Diomedes’ theft of the Palladium (or Palladion in Greek.) So I read of this most reverent wooden statue in the terms of Vicky Alvear Shecter’s amazing tale of Odysseus. So the Palladium leaves Troy with the great intuitive Greek and his lion-skin-clad mate. But somehow it leaves the city after the war, and not via Odysseus, since he heads back to Ithaka in order to drink some Ouzo and relax as he imports washing machines cheap from Albania.

Diomedes and Odysseus stealing the Palladium (from the Louvre)

Now here the tales seem to peter out. Somehow the Palladium leaves Troy, though it doesn’t seem to be in the hands of Odysseus. It perhaps left with Diomedes, who is recorded as ending up in Italy, or perhaps with Aeneas somehow. However it went, the next time it appears in the Historical/Mythological record is in Rome. Exactly how it stops being a Graeco-Trojan religious focus and becomes Roman is something of a mystery, but then the Romans were ever masters of claiming older valuable things as their own, a bit like Melania… I personally blame Virgil, who seems intent on making Troy Rome’s ancestor at any expense. Either way, the Palladium eventually ends up in the Temple of Vesta in Rome, where it is one of the city’s most sacred relics. There it is kept inviolable and hidden, away from the masses.

Nike and a warrior either side of a pillar topped by the Palladium (in the Louvre)

And this is where, for me, it turns up a second time in my research. I have just finished writing Commodus, my second book for Orion, in which I re-examine that infamous emperor in a new light, and lo and behold but what should suddenly crop up in my research but the Palladium!

Commodus as Hercules (in the Capitoline Museum)

I shall try and avoid spoilers of course, but suffice it to say there is, during that story, a fire in Rome. Let’s face it, Rome burns every ten minutes. Fires in ancient Rome are more common than non-sequiturs in a Richard Ayoade monologue or failures in Anglo-American government. This particular fire threatens the forum and the Palatine, and in the process catches and incinerates the temple of Vesta and the house of the Vestals. I give you my source material, the ever-entertaining Herodion:

“1.14.4 After consuming the temple and the entire sacred precinct, the fire swept on to destroy a large part of the city, including its most beautiful buildings. When the temple of Vesta went up in flames, the image of Pallas Athena was exposed to public view – that statue which the Romans worship and keep hidden, the one brought from Troy, as the story goes. Now, for the first time since its journey from Troy to Italy, the statue was seen by men of our time.

1.14.5 For the Vestal Virgins snatched up the image and carried it along the Sacred Way to the imperial palace.”

Rome burns

So there you have it. I wrote a tale set 1600 years BC in Anatolian Greece and it involved the Palladium. Then I wrote a tale set in the late 2nd century AD, almost two millennia later and half a known world away, and lo and behold there again is the Palladium.

Interestingly, I have since found a reference that Constantine (about whom I am also writing with the indomitable Gordon Doherty), when he founded the new Rome, moved the Palladium to Constantinople where he buried it below his column (hur, hur, hur – said in a Beavis and Butthead voice).

The Palladium, then. A battered wooden image of Pallas fashioned by a god, which seems fated to crop up in what I write. Bet you’ll remember it now when next it crops up.

One day I’ll be here, receiving an award…. 😉

 

 

Lucius Verus by M.C. Bishop

Sometimes books just appear at serendipitous times. Last month this book was released, penned by one of the top scholars in his field, a man whose work I trust implicitly. I happened to have just finished writing my novel on Commodus and sent it to my editor. But since Verus was the uncle of my emperor and has an important role in my tale, I simply had to read this. Glad I did. There was so much in here that I needed to add to my story, and fortunately I had that opportunity during the editing stage. ‘Lucius Verus’ was something of an eye-opener.

Bishop starts out on his journey through Verus’ life by explaining that he is not attempting to ‘rehabilitate’ Verus and remove the stigma that history has left, but rather to remove the chaff from accounts and reveal only what truths or perceivable truths lie beneath the endless bias of biographers ancient and modern. In a way, he might have failed in that task in the nicest possible way, because by the end, I found Verus thoroughly rehabilitated and sympathetic. Much, fortunately, like the character in my novel. Phew.

This book is actually two subjects rolled into one, as the title suggests. It is at one and the same time a detailed and as accurate as it is possible to be biography of the man who co-ruled the empire with the great Marcus Aurelius, and a military narrative on the Parthian campaigns of the 160s AD. That it achieves both aims smoothly and without feeling at odds with one another is superb.

For those who are unfamiliar with Verus, you will probably be aware of his adoptive brother Marcus Aurelius and his nephew Commodus. From 161 AD until his death in 169, he shared the rule of the Roman empire with Aurelius, the two working in consort as co-emperors. Verus is not one of those emperors who was damned by the state (with whom I am gradually dealing) but perhaps by dint of being an easy comparison with his famous brother, he has been somewhat tarnished and sullied by biased historians after his death in much the same way the damned emperors were. Aurelius is the great philosopher-king, an emperor who shunned war, yet spent much of his reign on the borders fighting the enemies of Rome. A man of wit and wisdom and a calm and mellow one, even. Verus has ever been painted as the dissolute playboy prince. He is presented to us by historians as a drinker, a hedonist, lazy and a poor comparison to Aurelius. Bishop set out to pull apart the clear bias and try to find the real man beneath. An admirable attempt, I have to say. Throughout the text, Bishop repeatedly shows two facets that make his work stand out:

• An almost unparalleled knowledge and understanding of the Roman world, which manifests in every tiny detail he produces being presented with clarity, sureness and relevance.
• A wry wit and easy style that prevents any danger of the book slipping into dusty irredeemable academia.

The book begins by explaining its purpose and goals. Bishop then goes on to examine in detail all the sources on Verus’ life and evaluate them carefully. From there, he moves onto a biography of the emperor’s life until his accession to power with his brother. We then learn of the situation in the east and are treated to a little history of the borderland. An examination of the joint emperors’ rule and the nature of their sharing of power follows before we head east with Verus to examine his campaign in more detail than I expected. On the conclusion of that, Bishop then goes on to tell us of Verus’ life from there until his untimely death, before evaluating the ‘wastrel’ emperor and presenting his conclusion to the reader. The appendices are as interesting and important as the rest of the text, too, including copies of the emperor’s letters ans, most impressive of all, an attempt at redacting the infamous Historia Augusta, trimming the chaff and presenting a more factual, more reasonable selection within it.

I am not going to go into any further detail on the contents here, though I will say that there was not a section or even a page that I was tempted to skim over. And I challenge anyone to read the book and not have their opinion of Verus altered. In short, the book is probably my favourite of Bishop’s works (and I have a dozen or so), and as a clarified biography of a maligned man, it matches Winterling’s Caligula, which was the main basis for my own last imperial work. Pride of place on my shelves and a more than worthy exploration of a man who has been largely ignored thus far by historians.

HIGHLY recommended.