The Last Legion

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

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Audio available 3.8

AD 476. The boy emperor Romulus Augustus is captured when Odoacer's forces overthrow the last imperial government in the West. Aurelianus, one of the few soldiers to survive the destruction of the imperial guard, gathers a small company to rescue Romulus and his enigmatic tutor before the new rulers can eliminate a symbol around whom resistance might form.

With Italy no longer safe and the eastern court unwilling to restore him, Romulus is taken across a fractured Europe in search of a Roman legion believed to remain in Britain. The fugitives find an island abandoned by imperial authority and threatened by local warlords. Their attempt to preserve the last remnant of Rome becomes an origin story for Arthurian Britain, joining the deposition of the final western emperor to the legend of a sword, a teacher and a new royal line.