The Third Stanza: A Novel of Nero
Rome, 64 AD. The city is an ocean of fire, and on a terrace above it a young emperor plays the lyre-not because anyone is listening, but because the silence is unbearable without it. The world will call him a monster. The world never understood him.
He was seventeen when his mother poisoned an emperor to put him on the throne. She built him to be an instrument of power. Instead he became an artist-the one variable she never designed for.
Then he murdered her. And she is the one telling this story.
From beyond her own death, Agrippina-cold, magnificent, unrepentant-assembles her son's life out of order: the fire, the love, the matricide, the crown, the fall. The engineer, mourning her masterpiece. It is the what happens when an artistinherits a machine that only respects violence, and the music no one else can hear finally stops.
The Third Stanza is Book Three of the Stanza Trilogy-three generations of imperial Rome, three women who built it fromreverse. Each book stands completely alone.
For readers of Madeline Milleza Casati.
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