Deals with the Rome of Nero and the early Christian martyrs. Scenes of court life and of Christian worship, the burning of Rome, and the massacres in the amphitheatre are woven into a narrative. Characters in the story include Petronius, a Roman noble who is representative of the dying paganism, and Ligia, the beautiful Christian who is the object of unwelcome attentions from Vinicius, one of the Emperor's guards
