Unto Cæsar

Rome during the reign of Caligula. A public slave auction brings together Dea Flavia, a proud woman of the imperial family, and Taurus Antinor, the powerful prefect of Rome. Their dispute over the young slave Nola ends in tragedy when the girl’s mother curses Dea Flavia and dies before the crowd. Taurus, outwardly one of the empire’s senior officials, is secretly committed to the new Christian faith and increasingly drawn to the woman whose privilege and pagan certainty oppose his beliefs.

Around them, ambitious senators and officers plot to remove Caligula while competing over who should inherit imperial power. Caligula uses suspicion, spectacle and mob violence to expose his enemies, forcing Taurus to choose between duty to Caesar, love for Dea Flavia and obedience to his faith. The novel combines a fictional conspiracy with the documented tyranny of Caligula, Roman slavery and an imagined early Christian community in the capital.