Why should I move? I have made a sort of life for myself. It is not fear that keeps me here, in this distant town on the edge of barbarian lands, far from where the lemon trees bloom. You tell me it is now safe for me to return to Rome, the tyrant being no more. I learned, when too young for such knowledge, that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment. Perhaps he did why say so otherwise? Then I was with Domitian throughout that terrible year when Rome stumbled and seemed about to be engulfed in civil disaster. Vespasian himself often spoke warmly of my father, and even let me understand that he owed his life to him. We were brought up together, my own (reputed) father having been killed at the side of his father Vespasian in some scuffle with barbarians in the British campaign. I knew, if any did, the innermost thoughts of that dark and secret man. I was indeed the schoolfellow, and for some years the dearest friend, perhaps the only friend, of the tyrant Domitian. You do not state this reason, but I know it is in your mind. Yet you ask this of me, and such is my respect for you that, as I say, I cannot deny you, though every fibre of my nervous being cries out to me to do so.Įven the particular reason why you seek my help makes me shudder. You know this yourself, being, as I remember, a man of lively and sympathetic imagination - the source which feeds your genius. And I do not know if I can summon the fortitude to set down for you what I recall - still less what I was guilty of - in the time of terror. The cries of those dragged to prison and execution still ring in my disturbed and fearful nights. I, like all our generation, have waded deep in innocent blood. And yet I shrink from the task you set me, in part because I am conscious of my own inadequacy, in part because the thought of venturing into the gloomy cave of memory fills me with fear, foreboding, and self-hatred. What can I say? I cannot deny you, all the less because I am persuaded that your History will be immortal, and this makes me all the more anxious that my name should be, however vestigially, associated with it. Julius Agricola, should turn to me and request my help in preparing the materials for the History of our own terrible times, on which you tell me you have audaciously embarked. I confess that I do not know whether I am more honoured or more amazed: that you, the distinguished author of the Dialogue on Oratory, and of the ever to be admired Life of your father-in-law, the Imperator C. Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.Ī C1P catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library The right of Allan Massie to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.Īll rights reserved. Scauraus is the perfect conduit for the reader into this lethal world, bringing alive for us all the murderous sexual intrigues of a fascinating eraįirst published in 1999 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline A Sceptre book then he held one of the daggers against his throat and began to sob, and his secretary Epaphroditus stepped forward. "How ugly and vulgar my life has become", he said, but still couldn't bring himself to. "Nero picked up two daggers and tested their points. This chronicle of treachery and passion is rendered in prose of the most riveting kind, such as the depraved Nero's attempt at suicide: A remarkable year is reviewed in letters by Scaurus, once the lover of both Vespasian's son and daughter. The turmoil of civil war (and a nationalistic uprising in Judaea) has produced a new Emperor, Vespasian. In the new one, Nero's Heirs, set at the beginning of the year 66, the despotic Emperor Nero has committed suicide and already three of his successors are dead. His narratives of intrigue in the Roman Empire are always totally compelling and the large readership they have acquired is no surprise whatsoever. There is no doubt that Allan Massie has incontrovertibly established himself as the master of Roman historical fiction and the heir apparent to Robert Graves.
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