Let Us Follow Him

Caius Septimius Cinna is a wealthy Roman patrician who has lived for pleasure, spectacle, and self-indulgence, moving through feasts, philosophy, superstition, and luxury with cultivated taste but little faith in anything beyond appetite and survival. Yet beneath his polished skepticism lies a growing emptiness: when fortune fails him, even Alexandria's temptations cannot quiet his unrest, and despair drives him toward suicide and a desperate search for meaning. In the learned silence of the Serapeum, Cinna finds an unlikely guide in Timon of Athens, whose sorrowful wisdom suggests that humanity's old beliefs have collapsed and that suffering itself may herald a new truth. That hope deepens when Cinna falls in love with Timon's daughter Antea, a beautiful, prophetic, almost sacred figure whose marriage to him seems to promise joy beyond measure. But their happiness is shattered when Antea falls into a terrifying illness marked by visions, dread, and invisible presences. Cinna's frantic attempts to save her carry him from Egyptian healers to Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate introduces him to the condemned Nazarene, a gentle teacher whose innocence, suffering, and promise of life after death cast a haunting light over Cinna's grief and Antea's yearning. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.