The Course of Honour: A Novel (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery)

In ancient Rome ambitious citizens who aspired to political power to become one of the ruling elite―a senator had to follow what was known as The Course of Honor. This course had only one unbreakable rule: a senator is forbidden to marry a slave even a freed slave. When the soldier Vespasian meets an interesting girl in the imperial palace he doesnt know she is a slave in the household of the imperial family. But he is inexorably drawn in by her intelligence and charisma. Yet as Vespasian slowly rises from near-obscurity and as emperor after emperor plays out their own deadly seductive games of lust and conquest the future is something no one could imagine. No one could believe that a country-born army man might win the throne―no one that is except a slave girl who with the future Emperor begins a daring course of honor of her own.