A picaresque tale of the trials and tribulations of Kaeso who lives in the days of Nero's Rome. Monteilhet is also the author of "Les Derniers Feux".

Charming, handsome, intelligent, beloved by all he meets, Kaiso is just the young man to find favour in Nero's Rome. Once he grows out of his absurd scruples...
But Kaeso, for all his intellect, is a Roman Tom Jones, an innocent at intrigue. All his best efforts—to guard his virtue from stepmother and Emperor alike, to protect the Jewish slave Selene from his father's lust, to show St Paul how to make Christianity popular, all without implicating the generous Stoic Silanus—end only in disaster. Violent death, ruin, brutality and perversion embroil half of Rome in the destructive wake of Kaeso's good intentions while Kaeso himself, morals miraculously intact, lies, cheats, charms and philosophizes his way to his own bizarrely virtuous fate.
—from the back cover