Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
A Friend of Caesar - cover

A Friend of Caesar

William Davis

Publisher: Endymion Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years after Romulus—so tradition ran—founded the little village by the Tiber which was to become "Mother of Nations," "Centre of the World," "Imperial Rome." To state the time according to modern standards it was July, fifty years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The fierce Italian sun was pouring down over the tilled fields and stretches of woodland and grazing country that made up the landscape, and the atmosphere was almost aglow with the heat. The dust lay thick on the pavement of the highway, and rose in dense, stifling clouds, as a mule, laden with farm produce and driven by a burly countryman, trudged reluctantly along.
Yet, though the scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come. For this spot was near "cool Præneste," one of the favourite resorts of Latium to the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive heat of the capital. And they were wise in their choice; for Præneste, with its citadel, which rose twelve hundred feet over the adjoining country, commanded in its ample sweep both the views and the breezes of the whole wide-spreading Campagna. Here, clustering round the hill on which stood the far-famed "Temple of Fortune," lay the old Latin town of the Prænestians; a little farther westward was the settlement founded some thirty odd years before by Sulla as a colony. Farther out, and stretching off into the open country, lay the farmhouses and villas, gardens and orchards, where splendid nuts and roses, and also wine, grew in abundant measure...
Available since: 08/11/2016.

Other books that might interest you

  • Eleanor of Aquitaine: Mother of the Pride - Mother Of The Pride - cover

    Eleanor of Aquitaine: Mother of...

    Catherine Muschamp

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    A woman of extraordinary courage, beauty and iron will - uniquely Queen of France then Queen of England, and mother of two English Kings - Eleanor of Aquitaine’s name was legendary even before her death.B7 Media have teamed up with Tara Arts to release for the first time on audio Eileen Page's mesmerising final performance as 'Eleanor of Aquitaine: Mother of the Pride’.Tara Arts, Artistic Director, Jatinder Verma, describes Eileen Page’s performance: “Eileen Page’s Eleanor has all the mellifluous poise, resolve and wit you would expect of the only woman to have ruled England and France. A tour de force!”
    Show book
  • Death in the Great Dismal - cover

    Death in the Great Dismal

    Eleanor Kuhns

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    September 1800, Maine. Will Rees is beseeched by Tobias, an old friend abducted by slave catchers years before, to travel south to Virginia to help transport his pregnant wife, Ruth, back north. Though he's reluctant, Will's wife Lydia convinces him to go...on the condition she accompanies them. Upon arriving in a small community of absconded slaves hiding within the Great Dismal Swamp, Will and Lydia are met with distrust. Tensions are high and a fight breaks out between Tobias and Scipio, a philanderer with a bounty on his head known for conning men out of money. The following day Scipio is found dead—shot in the back. Stuck within the hostile Great Dismal and with slave catchers on the prowl, Will and Lydia find themselves caught up in their most dangerous case yet.
    Show book
  • The Quest of The Fish-Dog Skin - cover

    The Quest of The Fish-Dog Skin

    James Willard Shcultz

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    The Quest of the Fish-Dog Skin" is a story of the adventures of two Indian boys or, rather, of an Indian boy and a white boy, Indian. These two set forth from the lodges of the Blackfeet, in company with an older Indian who acts as their guide, philosopher, and friend, on a far quest to the salt water to find the medicine-animal that is called "fish-dog" because it lives only in the water, swimming like a fish, yet has the face of a dog and barks like a dog. One of the boys, being of white parentage, knew from books in the little library at home that this strange animal, which we recognize at once as some sort of a seal, frequented the waters of the Pacific Ocean and adjacent rivers.
    Show book
  • Comes a Horseman - cover

    Comes a Horseman

    Paul Lederer

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0 
    Armed to the teeth, Dancer comes to town with death on his mindThe rider carries three pistols and a couple of rifles to boot. John Dancer arrives in Matchstick with enough firepower to stop an army. No one knows his target, but this tiny Western town is rife with corruption, from the embezzling bank manager to the sheriff who is no longer up for the job. South of town, the owner of the sprawling SS Ranch has his own enemies, including small-time farmers and the stunning Esperanza del Rio, whose family has run the country since the days of King Philip IV. Any one of these people could be in Dancer’s sights.
    Show book
  • Mr Mac and Me - cover

    Mr Mac and Me

    Esther Freud

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    It is 1914, and Thomas Maggs lives with his parents on the Suffolk coast. Life is quiet - shaped by the seasons. Then one day a mysterious Scotsman arrives, looking for all the world like Sherlock Holmes. Mac is what the locals call him as they whisper. But Mac isn't a detective, he's the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and together with his red haired artist wife, they soon become a source of fascination and wonder to Thomas.
    Show book
  • In the Year of Jubilee - cover

    In the Year of Jubilee

    George Gissing

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    The Jubilee marks the fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria. Dickensian in its sweeping scope of London life, Jubilee depicts the harsh and disreputable conditions of lower-middle class life at the end of the 19th century. (Introduction by S. Kovalchik)
    Show book