Book Description

Paethias Demidus Arius, a legatus of Rome, had led legions against Gaul, Germania, Parthia and served under Vespasian in the Judean war. It was after Caesar Nero summoned Paethias to take a small contingent of Rome's elite Centurions to Greece, where Paethias encountered Antiachus Miltiades Delphanae, the last the thread of the ancient Spartan military. At the cost of thirty-three of his centurions, Paethias is able to capture the last Spartan. Fearing this Greek more than any man he has ever known, Paethias shackles Antiachus next to a Christian, an evangelist, who converts Antiachus on the voyage to Rome. In Rome, Antiachus becomes the focus of Nero's vindictive hatred, as the Christian is tortured and forced to fight gladiators and beasts before the endless audiences in the Circus Maximus. In the prisons of the Circus Maximus, he learns of Judas a famous overgrown lion Nero uses only against Christians. Knowing his wife's soul is at stake, Antiachus must endure pain, exhaustion and impossible odds in order to take the truth of salvation to his wife. Seeing the grief Antiachus endures, many Romans convert to this new faith but fear being discovered, knowing they too will stand in the Circus Maximus where Nero tests the innocence and pristine beauty of a faith he despises. From 64 to 68 A.D. the Roman emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ordered the execution of Christians in Rome's largest auditorium, the Circus Maximus, where Christians were slain by Gladiators and beasts. The Christian and the Lion is a character driven historical fiction that depicts the Christian genocide perpetrated by Nero through the lens of a Christian and a Roman general, even encasing political events now forgotten. The Christian and the Lion is based on events recorded by the ancient historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio.