Rome’s End

Rome, 45 BC. Lucius Sestius Quirinalis is an ambitious young lawyer whose family has taken up a case against the historian Sallust for corruption during his governorship of Africa. Sallust’s own research into the Catilinarian Conspiracy has disturbed men who believed the events of 63 BC safely buried. When the Sestii’s friend Caecilius is killed after being mistaken for Lucius, the legal dispute becomes an investigation into a threat operating close to Julius Caesar’s dictatorship.

Lucius hides in Hippo Regius with the Subura informant Cornelius Rufus, but evidence from Sallust’s former province draws Caesar’s agents after them. Returning to Rome means confronting the political bargains that ended the civil war and the unresolved loyalties of men who still call themselves republicans. The inquiry continues through the Ides of March, connecting private betrayal to Caesar’s assassination and forcing Lucius to recognise that a court case can become lethal when history itself is evidence.