DECIUS: THE PERSECUTOR EMPEROR LOST IN THE GOTHIC SWAMP
About this ebook
September 249 CE. Decius takes the throne by force and immediately sets about fixing what he believes is broken — Rome has forgotten its gods, and the gods have abandoned Rome in return.
His solution is radical. Every resident of the empire must perform a pagan sacrifice. Prove your loyalty to the old ways, or face the consequences.
The Christians refuse. The frontiers collapse anyway.
King Kniva leads a massive Gothic coalition across the Danube, and Decius does what Roman emperors are supposed to do — he marches out to meet them personally, determined to prove that discipline and ancestral virtue can still win wars.
He's wrong.
At Abritus in June 251 CE, the Goths lure the Roman army into the Moesian marshes and slaughter them completely. Decius and his son die in the mud — the first Roman emperors in history to fall in battle against foreign invaders.
Their bodies are never found.
Reconstructed from rare coinage, imperial inscriptions, and fragmented ancient chronicles, this is the story of a man who believed in Rome so completely that he marched it into oblivion.
He didn't fail Rome. He believed in it too much.
Secure your copy today.
