The Ides of March, 44 BC. Julius Caesar falls beneath the daggers of the conspirators, and a frail, almost unknown eighteen-year-old learns that he has been adopted as Caesar's heir. His name is Gaius Octavius. No one in Rome takes him seriously.

The novel follows his rise through civil war, ruthless alliances and betrayal: the pact with Mark Antony and Lepidus, the proscriptions, Philippi, the final confrontation with Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. At his side stand Agrippa, his friend and general, and Maecenas, his political mind. And Livia, the woman who for half a century will be his companion and his shrewdest counsellor.

The war won, the hardest challenge remains: to rule an empire without becoming a king. Octavian becomes Augustus, rebuilds Rome from its foundations and invents a new kind of power disguised as the ancient Republic. Yet the dream of a lasting peace comes at a price, and the most powerful man in the world finds himself helpless before the fate of his own family: heirs dying one after another, a daughter sent into exile, a succession slipping beyond his control.

This is the story of how the Roman Empire was born—and of the man who willed it into being.