Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century

About the book

William Ware continues the fictional world of Zenobia through letters attributed to Lucius Manlius Piso and introduced by Nicomachus. Writing to Fausta in Palmyra, Piso describes Roman society while explaining the religious commitments that increasingly separate him from its customary beliefs. Family affection, philosophical conversation, artistic life, and political rumor give the conflict a domestic and social texture before persecution makes its stakes unmistakable. The emperor Aurelian belongs to history, but the correspondence and its intimate witnesses are the novelist's construction. Ware uses that invented access to explore what conversion costs people attached to the culture around them. The resulting historical romance asks how an individual's allegiance to conscience can survive when civic belonging and religious conformity are treated as inseparable obligations.

• Conscience and conformity
• Religious conversion
• Imperial authority

Why read it

The letter form lets religious and political conflict emerge through relationships and everyday observations.

English fifth edition, James Miller, 1874, with two volumes in one