The fourth instalment of Robert Fabbri's bestselling Vespasian series. Caligula is dead, Rome is in the hands of a drooling fool - and Vespasian must fight to save his brother's life and find the Eagle of the Seventeenth.

The fourth instalment of Robert Fabbri's bestselling Vespasian series. Caligula is dead, Rome is in the hands of a drooling fool - and Vespasian must fight to save his brother's life and find the Eagle of the Seventeenth. Caligula has been assassinated and the Praetorian Guard have proclaimed Claudius Emperor - but his position is precarious. His three freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas and Callistus, must find a way to manufacture a quick victory for Claudius - but how? Pallas has the answer: retrieve the Eagle of the Seventeenth, lost in Germania nearly 40 years before. Who but Vespasian could lead a dangerous mission into the gloomy forests of Germania? Accompanied by a small band of cavalry, Vespasian and his brother try to pick up the trail of the Eagle. But they are tailed by hunters who pick off men each night and leave the corpses in their path. Someone is determined to sabotage Vespasian's mission. In search of the Eagle and the truth, pursued by barbarians, Vespasian will battle his way to the shores of Britannia. Yet can he escape his own Emperor's wrath?

Vespasian's fourth adventure—can he escape his own Emperor's wrath? Caligula has been assassinated and the Praetorian Guard have proclaimed Claudius Emperor—but his position is precarious. His three freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas, and Callistus, must find a way to manufacture a quick victory for Claudius—but how? Pallas has the answer: retrieve the Eagle of the Seventeenth, lost in Germania nearly 40 years before. Who but Vespasian could lead a dangerous mission into the gloomy forests of Germania? Accompanied by a small band of cavalry, Vespasian and his brother try to pick up the trail of the Eagle, but they are tailed by hunters who pick off men each night and leave the corpses in their path. Someone is determined to sabotage Vespasian's mission. In search of the Eagle and the truth, pursued by barbarians, Vespasian will battle his way to the shores of Britannia.

One man, born in rural obscurity, destined to become one of Rome's greatest Emperors 26 AD: 16-year-old Vespasian leaves his family farm for Rome, his sights set on finding a patron and following his brother into the army, but he discovers a city in turmoil and an Empire on the brink. The aging emperor Tiberius is in seclusion on Capri, leaving Rome in the iron grip of Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard. Sejanus is ruler of the Empire in all but name, but many fear that isn't enough for him. Sejanus' spies are everywhere—careless words at a dinner party can be as dangerous as a barbarian arrow. Vespasian is totally out of his depth, making dangerous enemies (and even more dangerous friends—like the young Caligula) and soon finds himself ensnared in a conspiracy against Tiberius. With the situation in Rome deteriorating, Vespasian flees the city to take up a position as tribune in an unfashionable legion on the Balkan frontier. Even here, rebellion is in the air and unblooded and inexperienced, Vespasian must lead his men in savage battle with hostile mountain tribes. Vespasian will soon realize that he can't escape Roman politics any more than he can escape his destiny.

A hero is forged in battle and a legend is born in this second installment in the Vespasian series Thracia, AD30: Even after four years of military service at the edge of the Roman world, Vespasian can't escape the tumultuous politics of an Empire on the brink of disintegration. His patrons in Rome have charged him with the clandestine extraction of an old enemy from a fortress on the banks of the Danube before it falls to the Roman legion besieging it. Vespasian's mission is the key move in a deadly struggle for the right to rule the Roman Empire. The man he has been ordered to seize could be the witness that will destroy Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard, and ruler of the Empire in all but name. Before he completes his mission, Vespasian will face ambush in snowbound mountains, pirates on the high seas, and Sejanus's spies all around him. But by far the greatest danger lies at the rotten heart of the Empire, at the nightmarish court of Tiberius, Emperor of Rome and debauched, paranoid madman.

Vespasian's mission will lead to violence, mayhem, and theft—and in the end, to a betrayal so great it will echo through the ages Vespasian is serving as a military officer on the outskirts of the Roman Empire, suppressing local troubles and defending the Roman way. But political events in Rome—Tiberius's increasingly insane debauchery, the escalating grain crisis—draw him back to the city. When Caligula becomes Emperor, Vespasian believes that things will improve. Instead, he watches the young emperor deteriorate from Rome's shining star to a blood-crazed, incestuous, all-powerful madman. Lavish building projects, endless games, public displays of his relationship with his sister, Drusilla, and a terrified senate are as nothing to Caligula's most ambitious plan: to bridge the bay of Neapolis and ride over it wearing Alexander's breastplate. And it falls to Vespasian to travel to Alexandria and steal it from Alexander's mausoleum.