The Nero Prediction

It is 48 AD, a time when Rome rules the world and astrologers rule Rome. Agrippina, the niece of Emperor Claudius, 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. Epaphroditus becomes Nero’s confidant as the art-obsessed Caesar dreams of an age when music will rule 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 embarks upon 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 and friend, is fated to kill his Caesar.

Author Humphry Knipe’s novel shakes the rafters of conventional belief about Nero and sheds new light on the pervasive influence of astrology is ancient Rome.