Set in Rome, the book is a sequel to The Secret of the Kingdom, a novel about the early days of Christianity.

The protagonist and narrator is Minutus, the son of Marcus, the main character of the previous novel.

Minutus is a Roman citizen striving to survive without political entanglements.

Through a boyhood friendship with Nero, he becomes a sometimes advisor, sometimes a tool, and sometimes a fool of the capricious emperor.

A cruel fate makes him the commander of the menagerie that supplied the wild animals that tore his firstborn son to pieces, and the book was ostensibly written as a guide for his second son, great-grandson of the Emperor Claudius.