Today we head back two thousand years to the rich, rowdy, ruthless Roman world of the Emperor Domitian. Our guide is the much-loved novelist Lindsey Davis.

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For years Lindsey Davis has been captivating readers with her series of detective novels set in the first century AD. Her great protagonists, Falco and Flavia Albia, are names that are probably already familiar to you and enough in themselves to conjure memories of thrilling, twisting tales in Ancient Britain or in the Eternal City itself.

This spring Davis has published the latest book in her Flavia Albia series, A Comedy of Terrors, which is set in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, and more specifically during the week running up to the Festival of Saturnalia.

For us this means the perfect guide and the perfect setting for a trip into the past. We’ll be giving a hardback copy of A Comedy of Terrors away to one of our newsletter subscribers this week – so to be in with a chance of winning it, make sure you visit our site and sign up.

As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.

Show notes

Scene One: Bay of Naples, ten years after Vesuvius.

Scene Two: Syria, to witness – the (third) Falso Nero episode.

Scene Three: The Black Banquet where senators and others were terrorised and Domitian’s big ‘friendly’ banquet for the entire Roman people.

Memento: A giant Roman measure of Falernian Wine from the slopes of Vesuvius

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Lindsey Davis

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Colorgraph

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