Rome Fiction

Wighard, archbishop designate of Canterbury, has been discovered garrotted in his chambers in the Lateran Palace in Rome in the autumn of AD 664. The solution to this terrible crime appears simple as the palace guards have arrested Brother Ronan Ragallach, as he fled from Wighard's chamber. Although the Irish monk denies responsibility, Bishop Gelasius is convinced the crime is political and that Wighard was slain in pique at the triumph of the pro-Roman Anglo-Saxon clergy in their debate with the pro-Columba Irish clergy at Whitby.

The exemplary life of a noble soldier/statesman, a description of ancient Germany, and a discussion of oratory are the subjects of three short masterpieces by the brilliant Roman historian, Tacitus.

Cowardice in a legionary carries a heavy punishment: the sentence of decimation—to live or die at the whim of the gods with the unlucky ones clubbed to death by their fellow soldiers. Ursus, the man killed in Quintus's group, lays a heavy charge on the youth, asking him to look after the remaining men and to take care of his family back in Rome.

In the year A.D. 9, three Roman Legions under Quintilius Varus were betrayed by the Germanic war chief, Arminius, and destroyed in the forest known as Teutoburger Wald. Six years later Rome is finally ready to unleash her vengeance on the barbarians. The Emperor Tiberius has sent his adopted son, Germanicus Caesar, into Germania with an army of forty-thousand legionaries. The come not on a mission of conquest, but one of annihilation. With them is a young legionary named Artorius.

A year has passed since the end of the Gallic rebellion of Sacrovir and Florus. Retribution has been exacted, and the province is at peace once more. And yet, there are some who escaped Rome's justice. They are led by a man whose heart burns with hate; an heir to rebellion. Knowing that there can be no victory against the legions, his vengeance can only be wrought through terror and murder. The Gallic city of Lugdunum will be the first to taste his wrath.

Big, bold, and beautiful are three adjectives that describe Erika to a tee. Named after her mother’s favorite soap opera vixen, Erika Kane is self-assured, headstrong, and opinionated. But she’s also unlucky in love. Whenever Erika thinks she’s found everlasting love, it always ends up being short-lived - literally. She has three dead husbands to prove the point, and it’s earned her the title “The Black Widow”. But just when Erika is about to give up on true love, she learns that, just like in the soaps, love sometimes shows up when you least expect it.

Ancient Rome has been in a state of turmoil as the rival gangs of Publius Clodius, a high-born, populist politician, and his arch-enemy, Titus Milo, have fought to control the consular elections. When Clodius is murdered on the famed Appian Way and Milo is accused of the crime, the city explodes with riots and arson, and even the near sacrosanct Senate House is burned to the ground.

In all of Roman history there was never a more turbulent year than A.D. 69, the ill-omened "Year of the Three Emperors". By some miracle, the greatest historian of the age, Tacitus, was able to chronicle those momentous events in a work he called The History. In its pages are some of the most memorable events of Roman history described in some of the most intensely passionate prose ever devised.

In the year 28 AD the people of Frisia, a previously loyal province, were suffering under the oppression of the Roman magistrate, a former Centurion named Olennius. So blinded by greed had he become that he taxed the populous well beyond their means to produce. Now impoverished and risking starvation, the Frisians did the unspeakable and sought open rebellion as their only means of survival.

On the mist-shrouded Isle of Hibernia, now known as Ireland, 26 years have passed since the murder of the high king, Fiacha Finnolach. The usurper Elim of Ulster’s promises of peace and prosperity have come to naught, as drought and famine afflict the land. Across the Irish Sea, the Roman Governor of Britannia, Julius Agricola, is met with an intriguing proposition. Fiacha’s son, Tuathal Techtmar, born when his pregnant mother fled into exile, has grown to manhood. He seeks the aid of Rome in avenging his father and becoming High King of Hibernia.

Welcome to summer 258 B.C.

Benvenuto Cellini, master artisan of Renaissance Italy, once crafted a beautiful amulet prized for its unimaginable power - and untold menace. Now the quest to recover this legendary artifact depends upon one man: David Franco, a brilliant but skeptical young scholar at Chicago's world-renowned Newberry Library.

It has been three years since the wars against Arminius and the Cherusci. Gaius Silius, legate of the 20th Legion, is concerned that the barbarians - though shattered by the war - may be stirring once again. He also seeks to confirm the rumors regarding Arminius' death. What Silius does not realize is that there is a new threat to the empire, but it does not come from beyond the frontier; it is coming from within, where a disenchanted nobleman looks to sow the seeds of rebellion in Gaul.

In the seven years since he crossed the Alps and began his war against the Roman Republic, Hannibal Barca stood unbeaten in battle. However, maintaining a large army was a costly proposition and the government of Carthage proved stingy with its coins. To intercept the supplies destined for Hannibal, the Senate of Rome stationed Legions in Iberia. But, when the Legions were destroyed by Hannibal's brother and their Generals killed, the Senate could not find a willing replacement. Enter one Tribune who hungered for the position.

In 48 BC the Roman generals Caesar and Pompey are engaged ina battle to rule the world. As Pompey plots a reckless stand on the banks ofthe Nile, Gordianus the Finder - who has brought his dying wife, Bethesda, to the Nile seeking a cure from its sacred waters - finds himself suddenly at the heart of a series of treacherous and history-altering events. While Caesar and Cleopatra embark on a legendary romance, Egypt remains ravaged by the brutal contest between the queen and her brother, King Ptolemy.

It makes me laugh when I hear folks think Molly and I rushed into things too fast, spouting that we couldn't possibly have felt what we did for each other in such a short space of time. I say, how the hell would they know? We made it, didn't we? She became my whole life, didn't she? And as for my folks not being real, being true? Tell that to me aged 10, 11, 12 - damn, all my bastard life - when I was never enough, when I was beaten until I bled for being too good at football and not being everything they'd dreamed.

In the late August of AD 79, the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum are going about their normal business in the late summer heat. Two of them have a room share arrangement: Nonius, scrounger, thief and failed pimp works by night and sleeps by day; Larius, the fresco painter with dreams of artistic greatness, does the opposite. When just after midday the summit of Vesuvius disappears in a vast volcanic ash cloud, their lives will change forever.

Il n'y a qu'un seul roman - et nous en sommes à la fois les auteurs et les personnages : l'Histoire. Tout le reste est imitation, copie, fragments épars, balbutiements. C'est l'Histoire que revisite ce roman-monde où, tantôt homme, tantôt femme, le narrateur vole d'époque en époque et ressuscite sous nos yeux l'aventure des hommes et leurs grandes découvertes. Vivant de cueillette et de chasse dans une nature encore vierge, il parvient, après des millénaires de marche, sur les bords du Nil où se développent l'agriculture et l'écriture.

When Luca Spaghetti (yes, that's really his name) was asked to show a writer named Elizabeth Gilbert around Rome, he had no idea how his life was about to change. She embraced his Roman ebullience, and Luca in turn became her guardian angel, determined that his city would help Liz out of her funk. Filled with colorful anecdotes about food, language, soccer, daily life in Rome, and Luca's own fish-out-of-water moments as a visitor to the United States, Un Amico Italiano is an audiobook that no fan of Eat, Pray, Love will want to miss.

The war that began in 218 B.C. with Hannibal's march across the Alps is one of the familiar stories of history, but its details are little known. A struggle between an emerging barbarian power and an old culture, it pitted a Roman army of mostly farmers against the highly trained officers of Carthage. Hannibal's empire, founded on her control of the sea, would lose her fight against the Romans' new methods of naval warfare.