A Bull for Pluto

A Slave's Story, Book 2

By: Christopher D. Stanley

Narrated by: Keith Edward Gerhard II

What would you give up for love? Your beliefs? Your friends and family? Your future? Your soul?

Lucius Coelius Felix, a once-proud Roman nobleman, has lost his will to live. Angered by the failure of his quest for healing, he travels to the sacred springs of Hierapolis in central Asia Minor to die.

But fate has other plans. When his faithful servant Marcus rescues a young Jewish slave named Miriam, their encounter sets in motion a chain of events that will reshape their past, present, and future.

A brush with death brings them together to nurse Lucius back to health, but their budding affection can only go so far since Miriam insists that Marcus be circumcised and embrace his Jewish ancestry before she can love him. For Marcus, that is a bridge too far.

Disaster awaits in Antioch, and the effort of addressing it saps Lucius's remaining strength. Sensing that death is near, he finally tells Marcus the truth about his past and how he has provided for his future. The revelation places Marcus in a quandary from which there is no escape and no right answers. Must one person die for another to live?

From the poisonous mists of Pluto's cave in Hierapolis to the elite mansions of Pisidian Antioch in A Rooster for Asklepios. Against the backdrop of imperial Rome and the rise of faiths old and new, love and loyalty wage war with destiny.

Fans of Conn Iggulden, Ken Follett, and Robert Graves will be captivated by this richly detailed and compelling exploration of life in first-century Roman Asia Minor by a Roman historian.

Christopher D. Stanley is an emeritus professor at St. Bonaventure University who studies and writes about the social history of early Christianity and the Greco-Roman world. He has written or edited seven academic books and dozens of professional articles on the subject and presents papers regularly at conferences around the world.

©2020 Christopher D Stanley (P)2025 Christopher D Stanley

Continuing the Journey with Twists and Turns

This second volume of a proposed three-volume trilogy continues the story of the slave, Marcus, and his master, Lucius, adding a few more characters into the mix. This volume, while significantly shorter than the previous volume, is full of the historical aspects that make this set a must read for those interested in Roman Asia Minor in the the first-century CE. We see here displayed the deepest concerns of life and death, of love and violent hatred, of hope and moves toward redemption. Thanks to the author, we are privy to several rituals from the Greco-Roman world, including those from religious, political, social, and medical fields. Already by this second volume we are invested in the characters and their developing situation(s), and the author manages to present a few surprises along with the well-developed anticipations arising from the ensuing narrative. This volume is held together by various images of devotion: religious adherents to their gods, slaves to their masters, fathers to their children, men and women seeking a life together, and rootedness in ancestral traditions. Again, we get to imagine the interactions of Romans, Jews, and even a brief glimpse of some charismatically organized followers of Jesus. I wait eagerly for the third volume to see how the story will come to resolution.