Other editions of book The Nero Prediction

It is a time when Rome rules the world and astrologers rule Rome with their eerie doctrine that is part astronomy, part superstition and all powerful. It is 48 AD and the Romans are searching the Museum of Alexandria for a sixteen-year-old who, according to court astrologers, is destined to play a fateful role in the future of the empire. Tigellinus, handsome and ruthless, discovers Epaphroditus, a library slave who was born at the fated time and sends him to Rome to become the young Nero’s personal assistant.There Epaphroditus battles court intrigues and struggles with the question whether Nero is the Christian’s Antichrist who “fiddled” while Rome burnt or a musical genius trapped inside a Caesar ."Not since Marguerite Yourcenar and her novel Memoirs of Hadrian has there beenmuch of anything that actually places the reader, spirit and soul, in the time periodwritten about. Knipe fruitfully evokes the dreadful, constellated world of the hubristic yet musical emperor, making for a most vivifying and engaging read.”—Jaye Beldo

It is 48 AD, a time when Rome rules the world and astrologers rule Rome.Agrippina, the emperor Claudius’ niece, reads in the stars that someone born in Alexandria on July 19, 32 AD, is destined to help raise her son, the future emperor Nero, to the throne of the Caesars. This fated young man is Epaphroditus, a library slave and the book’s narrator, who at the age of 16 is taken by force to Rome to serve young Nero.Epaphroditus becomes Nero’s confidant as the art-obsessed Caesar dreams of an age when music rules the world. After Nero performs his musical spectacles in public, apocalyptic Christians—believing him to be the antichrist—set Rome afire.Revolutionary unrest strikes Rome, a fiery comet makes a foreboding appearance, and the young emperor makes a concert tour of Greece as enemies sprout like Hydra’s heads. Epaphroditus, fortified by the return of his faith in astrology, discovers that he, Nero’s protector, is fated to kill his Caesar.Author Humphry Knipe’s brilliant historical novel shakes the rafters of conventional belief about Nero and his Rome and the ancient science of astrology. As Michael Grant, the preeminent published expert on the Roman Empire, says: “The belief in astrology was so predominant in the Mediterranean world that it exceeded every religion in power and influence. I admire Humphry Knipe’s ingenuity in weaving an imaginative and fascinating story around it in The Nero Prediction.”Miriam T. Griffin, the author of Nero: The End of a Dynasty, writes: “The Nero Prediction captures very imaginatively an aspect of ancient thinking that conventional scholarship ignores. . . . It contributes to understanding the ancient mental landscape.”

It is a time when Rome rules the world and astrologers rule Rome with their eerie doctrine that is part astronomy, part superstition and all powerful. It is 48 AD and the Romans are searching the Museum of Alexandria for a sixteen-year-old who, according to court astrologers, is destined to play a fateful role in the future of the empire. Tigellinus, handsome and ruthless, discovers Epaphroditus, a library slave who was born at the fated time and sends him to Rome to become the young Nero’s personal assistant. There Epaphroditus battles court intrigues and struggles with the question whether Nero is the Christian’s Antichrist who “fiddled” while Rome burnt or a musical genius trapped inside a Caesar . An enlightening perspective on one of the most misunderstood men in history.