The Mad Emperor

Resumen del libro

On 8 June AD218 a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy, egged on by his grandmother, led an army to battle in a Roman civil war. Against all expectations, he was victorious. Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor.

The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire. Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal.

He married a Vestal Virgin - twice. Rumours abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power and culture in Ancient Rome as we've never seen it before.

Biografía del autor

Harry Sidebottom es doctor en Historia y profesor de Historia Clásica en la Universidad de Oxford. Experto en historia militar, arte clásico e historia cultural del Imperio Romano, sus series de novela histórica, como su trilogía El trono del césar, publicado también por Editorial Espasa, se han publicado en más de quince países, convirtiéndose en auténticos fenómenos internacionales. Su última novela es El regreso del centurión (Espasa, 2021).