SPURIUS
A Novel
by David László Conhaim · Illustrated by Jorge González
A political whodunit set in ancient Rome after her victory over Hannibal. Consul Spurius Postumius Albinus turns detective — and uncovers a conspiracy that will cost 3,500 Romans their lives.
Why Readers Can't Put It Down
A World Built From Blood and Marble
Victory over Hannibal has left Rome intoxicated — with conquest, with pleasure, with danger. Into this volatile Republic steps Consul Spurius Postumius Albinus, a man of iron conviction in an age of dissolving certainties. Based on events recorded by Livy and confirmed by a surviving bronze plaque in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.
A Conspiracy That Reaches the Gods
The cult of Bacchus has spread through Rome like wine through water — nocturnal rites, forbidden initiates, and crimes that the Senate dare not name aloud. What Spurius uncovers in his investigation will not merely end careers. According to Livy, some 3,500 Romans will perish in the witch hunts that follow.
A Hero Who May Already Be Damned
Spurius is not a hero by choice. He is a Consul who has seen too much, survived too long, and trusted too few. In its finely balanced examination of freedom of belief and the manipulation of truth in times of national emergency, the novel speaks directly to our troubled world today.
Kulturalis Illustrated Edition
"Renowned Argentinian-born illustrator Jorge González's vivid images — including full-page and double-page illustrations — bring the graphic events of the novel to life."
González previously illustrated Lord of the Flies (The Folio Society) and The Shadow of the Wind (Los Libros del Zorro Rojo). Hand-lettering by Ruth Rowland — album covers for Elton John, Kate Bush & Cliff Richard.
On the History
The Bacchanalia suppression of 186 BC is one of the most thoroughly documented episodes in Roman Republican history, yet it remains little known outside classical scholarship. Livy devotes an extraordinary amount of space to it in Ab Urbe Condita, and his account is corroborated by the survival of the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus — a bronze tablet inscribed with the Senate's actual decree, discovered in Calabria in 1640 and now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.
What drew Conhaim to this episode was not simply its drama — though the scale of the suppression, the nocturnal rites, the accusations of murder and sexual transgression, and the figure of the consul who brought it all to light are inherently compelling — but its uncanny resonance with the present. The Roman state's response to the Bacchic cult raises questions about the limits of religious freedom, the use of fear as a political instrument, and the ease with which a society can be persuaded to destroy its own members in the name of order.
Conhaim's research took him from Livy's Latin to the bronze tablet itself, and from there to the broader world of the Roman Republic in the years immediately following the Second Punic War — a society simultaneously triumphant and anxious, flush with the spoils of empire and terrified of what those spoils might do to Roman virtue.
Primary Sources
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita
Book XXXIX, §§ 8–19
Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus
Bronze tablet, 186 BC · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Valerius Maximus
Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium, Book VI
Read the Opening Pages
The night they came for Publius Aebutius, the torches were already lit on the Aventine. Spurius heard them from his study — a low, rhythmic chanting that rose and fell like the breathing of something vast and not entirely human. He had heard it before. Every consul in living memory had heard it and done nothing. That, he supposed, was precisely the problem.
His secretary, a Greek freedman named Philemon, appeared in the doorway with the expression he reserved for news that could not be unsaid. Spurius set down his stylus.
"The boy has been taken to the grove," Philemon said. "His mother brought him herself."
Spurius Postumius Albinus, Consul of Rome, twice decorated in the field, survivor of Cannae and Zama and the slow political wars that followed, felt something he had not felt in years. Not fear — he had made his peace with fear long ago. Something older. The particular chill of a man who has just understood that the thing he has been ignoring has been watching him back.
"Which grove?" he asked, though he already knew.
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Kulturalis Illustrated Edition
Spurius: A Novel
David László Conhaim · Illustrated by Jorge González
- —Luxury illustrated hardcover — Kulturalis imprint
- —Full-page & double-page illustrations by Jorge González
- —Hand-lettering by Ruth Rowland
Ships October 15, 2026 · Free shipping on orders over $75
Early Praise
A gripping political whodunit that makes ancient Rome feel immediate, dangerous, and alive. Conhaim has done something rare — history as it felt to live it.
— Marcus H.
Historical Fiction Review
In its finely balanced examination of freedom of belief and the manipulation of truth in times of national emergency, Spurius speaks directly to today's troubled world.
— Livia C.
Advance Reader, Goodreads
González's illustrations are extraordinary — vivid, unsettling, and perfectly matched to Conhaim's prose. A luxurious and essential edition.
— T. Aurelius
The Classical Reader
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