The Conspiracy, A Novel

Nero's secret police believe they have come on the first hints of a plot against the emperor's life. Once a promising gifted friend of poets, pupil of the great Seneca, Nero has bloodied himself grown fat on power. Crass, mediocre men--the military the secret police--now have his ear. While he his court give themselves to pleasures increasingly perverse dissipated, the secret police close in on (or do they foment, or imagine?) the conspiracy of the men of letters.