About this ebook
Valentinian III inherited the Western Roman Empire at age six in 425 AD, barely old enough to understand what it meant, let alone hold it together. The real power belonged to generals, regents, and political survivors, none more formidable than Flavius Aetius, the soldier who stopped Attila the Hun cold at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 AD — arguably the most consequential military engagement in Western history.
Three years later, Valentinian invited Aetius to a private audience and stabbed him to death with his own hand.
The ancient historian Sidonius Apollinaris reportedly said the emperor had cut off his right hand with his left. He had no idea how right he was.
This book pulls you into the decaying corridors of a crumbling superpower — the scheming court of Galla Placidia, the desperate diplomacy that held Germanic tribes and Roman legions in uneasy alliance, and the fatal psychology of an insecure emperor who feared the man protecting him more than the enemies closing in. Drawing on primary sources including Ammianus Marcellinus, Procopius, and Jordanes, alongside the modern scholarship of Adrian Goldsworthy, Peter Heather, and Tom Holland, this account reconstructs one of history's most catastrophic acts of self-destruction in meticulous, gripping detail.
This is the story of how the greatest empire the world had ever seen was not brought down by barbarians at the gates. It was murdered in a quiet room by its own emperor.
If ancient Rome's final hours have ever fascinated you, this account will not let you go.
