The Year of Five Emperors

by Robert Eckert

Overview

The vicious Emperor Commodus is dead, after one cruelty too many.

How should a successor be chosen?

By election? The Senate chooses the capable bureaucrat Pertinax.
By purchase? The Praetorians like Didius Julianus, or at least his money.
By inheritance? Clodius Albinus has an ancient family with imperial ties.
By force? A major branch of the army backs the blunt Septimius Severus.
By acclamation? The common people adore the humble Pescennius Niger.

Rival gods, too, contend for the people's loyalties. In a Rome that is tearing itself apart, the household of Tullius Secundus, a Senator of the old school, struggle to find happiness and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781667873176
Publisher:	BookBaby
Publication date:	12/07/2022
Series:	Rise and Fall of the Severans , #1
Pages:	802
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

The author has degrees in philosophy, law, and mathematics, and lifelong interests in linguistics and history. He currently teaches in the Detroit area.

Editorial Reviews

★ 2023-05-25
Ancient Rome boils with sordid power plays, constant intrigue, full moon rituals, and eruptions of bloodshed in Eckert’s sprawling historical novel.

The author paints a panorama of the Roman Empire in the year 193, starting with the murder of the vile Emperor Commodus by Laetus, commander of the Praetorian Guard, after the leader attempts to rape Laetus’ betrothed. Pertinax is promptly elected emperor by the Senate, and he proves modest and competent but also impolitic and stingy; after he fails to pay the city watchmen their customary bribes, he’s unceremoniously stabbed to death. The Praetorians then massacre the city watch, sell the emperorship to one Didius Julianus for 25 gold pieces per Guardsman, and force the Senate to vote him in at spearpoint. The loathed and inept Julianus tries everything to keep his shaky hold on power, including drinking the blood of a rabbit sacrificed to the goddess Hecate. But powerful rivals—the governors of Britannia and Egypt; the rough-hewn general Septimius Severus—soon try to overthrow him with their legions. Throughout the upheavals, Eckert’s narrative focuses on the household of Sen. Marcus Tullius, his daughter Tullia, and those they’ve enslaved as they navigate a time when a careless comment could get one branded an emperor’s enemy. As it portrays real events (with a few embellishments), Eckert’s tale steeps readers in all things Roman—from wedding ceremonies to military drills to Rome’s traffic jams—and ably dissects a society structured around complex hierarchies and in which survival requires currying favor with the powerful; even casual conversations and actions are calculated for advantage. The author’s vivid, nuanced prose conveys the subtle tensions that besiege his characters as well as the brutality that awaits those who incorrectly parse them: “I order that his lying tongue be torn out by the roots, and that he be hung by his hands from a bar and flogged until death,” declares a judge of the loser in a lawsuit. The result is a captivating page-turner.

An entertaining sword-and-politics saga full of engrossing period detail and sharp drama.

Kirkus Reviews