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Historical person
51–96
Domitian was Roman emperor from AD 81 to 96 and the last ruler of the Flavian dynasty. His reign combined frontier campaigning and administrative control with a reputation, shaped by hostile senatorial sources, for suspicion, repression and autocratic rule.
In Lindsey Davis’s The Third Nero, Earlier pretenders had found support in the eastern provinces, making even an implausible claimant a political danger to Domitian. In L. J. Trafford’s Vitellius’ Feast, in the East, Vespasian accepts the challenge for the throne and depends on allies inside Rome to protect his teenage son Domitian and prepare the city for a Flavian takeover. Other novels featuring Domitian include Lindsey Davis’s A Capitol Death, Lindsey Davis’s A Comedy of Terrors, Amanda Cockrell’s The Border Wolves, Douglas Jackson’s Hammer of Rome, and Griff Hosker’s The Sword of Cartimandua.
In non-fiction, Domitian is discussed in L. J. Trafford’s How to Survive in Ancient Rome, Mary Beard’s Twelve Caesars, and Mary Beard’s The Colosseum. In L. J. Trafford’s How to Survive in Ancient Rome, How to Survive in Ancient Rome imagines the reader arriving in the capital in AD 95 and needing to establish an ordinary life under Domitian.
Historical context
Series
The Four Emperors quartet follows the collapse of Nero’s government and the successive regimes of Galba, Otho and Vitellius before Vespasian secures power. Rather than treating AD 68–69 only as a contest among generals, the novels remain close to the Palatine household: secretaries, slaves, freedmen, lovers and entertainers…
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The Gaius Valerius Verrens series follows a Roman officer whose career begins during the Boudican Revolt and carries him through the violent final years of Nero’s reign, the Year of the Four Emperors and the consolidation of Flavian rule. Valerius moves between Britain, Rome, the eastern frontier, Judaea…
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The Flavia Albia mysteries follow the British-born adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco as she works as a private informer in Rome during the reign of Domitian. Beginning in AD 89, the series moves through the Aventine, imperial building sites, gardens, courts and festival districts while Albia builds…
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Rider of Rome reimagines the career of Tiberius Claudius Maximus, the Roman cavalryman whose tombstone records service in the Dacian Wars and the pursuit of King Decebalus. The series places an auxiliary soldier at the centre of Trajan’s campaigns rather than viewing conquest solely through emperors and legionary…
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The Avalon series recasts British myth and history through generations of priestesses whose sanctuary preserves the worship of the Goddess as Roman power, Christianity, migration and political consolidation transform Britain. Its chronology reaches from survivors of a legendary Atlantis and the builders of Stonehenge through Bronze Age kingship,…
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The Sword of Cartimandua is a Roman Britain sequence following auxiliary cavalry and frontier soldiers from the age of Cartimandua through the Flavian and early Hadrianic period. The books use Brigantian politics, Roman conquest, northern campaigning, Caledonia and Hadrian’s Wall to show Britain as a frontier province where…
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The Borderlands trilogy follows Faustus Valerianus, the son of a Roman veteran and a British woman enslaved during Claudius’s conquest. Beginning with Agricola’s northern campaigns, Faustus attempts to build a Roman military identity while the communities being subdued include his mother’s people. His attachment to Constantia, responsibility for…
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The Damned Emperors series retells the reigns of Caligula, Commodus, Domitian and Caracalla through people close enough to witness their private fears and public violence. Each novel sets later hostile traditions against the personal, dynastic and political pressures that shaped an emperor condemned by Roman memory. Rather than…
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The Centurions quartet follows the half-brothers Correus and Flavius Appius Julianus from military apprenticeship during Vespasian’s reign to senior command under Domitian. Correus, born to an enslaved German woman, possesses the skills of a natural soldier but lacks legitimate status; Flavius inherits rank but must struggle to earn…
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The Roma Trilogy follows generations of the fictional Pinarius family across the long history of Rome. Roma begins with the city’s legendary foundation and continues through the Republic and the rise of Augustus; Empire carries the family through the Julio-Claudian, Flavian and adoptive-emperor periods; Dominus follows the later…
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The Agricola series follows Gnaeus Julius Agricola from an ambitious young military tribune to the governor who carried Roman campaigning into northern Britain. His career unfolds through the Boudican Revolt, Nero’s final years, the civil wars of AD 69 and the consolidation of Flavian rule. Alongside battlefield command,…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
