About this story
Christians burn as pitch-smeared torches in Nero's Vatican gardens while the crowd weeps mercy; Ursus brings down the bull that carries Lygia bound to its back; Petronius opens his veins at Cumae and leaves Caesar a letter calling him a bad artist. Forty-eight chapters carry a bathhouse longing to an olive terrace beyond Syracuse.
Who you’ll meet
Lygia, the royal hostage raised as a daughter in a house that cannot protect her, and Petronius, the arbiter of taste who keeps an emperor waiting while he decides what happens to her — the woman you want and the uncle who will arrange it.
How it opens
Noon found Petronius recovering from Nero's banquet among steam and cedar.
PetroniusRome asks too much of a man who attends the emperor after midnight.
You waited beside the bath while attendants worked perfumed oil into his arms.
Bath AttendantThe tribune Marcus Vinicius has returned from the eastern legions.
PetroniusAdmit him, but remove that bronze stool before he praises it.
Choose
Asia taught me to value Roman discomfort.
I came because I need counsel, not furniture.