On April 16, 69 AD, Marcus Salvius Otho woke before dawn, tested a dagger's edge, and slid it beneath his pillow. Ninety-five days into his reign, his armies were broken, his rival's road to Rome was wide open — and he had every resource to keep fighting.
He chose not to.
The man who died that morning bore little resemblance to the one history thought it knew. Nero's perfumed confidant. The court dandy who allegedly stole a wife and plundered a province. The schemer who unleashed the Praetorian Guard on a sitting emperor to snatch the purple.
Yet when the moment demanded a tyrant's survival instinct, Otho stunned everyone — including Tacitus, Suetonius, and Plutarch — by choosing Rome over himself.
Was it nobility? Exhaustion? Or the final, greatest performance of a lifelong actor?
This fast-paced biography reconstructs the most psychologically complex ruler of the Year of the Four Emperors — the man who used murder to reach the throne, and immortality to leave it.
Buy your copy today and decide what kind of man Otho really was.