Andivius Hedulio

A young Roman landowner under Commodus is outlawed on a false charge and spends years hiding inside his own empire — as a gladiator's hanger-on, a slave, a bandit — while trying to reach the emperor's ear. Edward Lucas White taught Latin and Greek in Baltimore for forty years and built the book out of what he knew: the roads, the villas, the auctions, the way a household actually ran. The pace is a chase, but the detail is a scholar's. Sixty plates of Roman ruins and monuments by painters including Panini and Hubert Robert run from 1457 to 1902, giving the empire's streets and forums a visual life alongside the chase.