At the beginning of the year 66, Emperor Nero ruled the Roman Empire. By the end of it, Nero had committed suicide and three of his successors were dead, and out of the carnage of civil war at home and a nationalistic uprising in Judaea a new emperor, Vespasian, had emerged. Here Scaurus, once the lover of both Vespasian's son and daughter, looks back on the whole extraordinary year and recreates a world of treachery, malice, passion and-occasionally-quiet heroism. Drawing on his formidable knowledge of Roman history, Allan Massie brings the distant past vividly to life and creates telling parallels with the present.