overthrown he (as the emperor's son-in-law) will be put to death by any successor regime. Gratianus and Maria become suspicious that the military commander, Constantine (the historical usurper Constantine III), may wish to make himself emperor and found a dynasty with his son Constans. They decide to pre-empt this by assassinating Constans; Maria will invite him to dinner, kill him, and accuse him of trying to rape her. Felix is aware of the plot and travels to Verulamium to give himself an alibi. Here, he is confronted by Paulinus, his confidential clerk, a freedman and one of the few educated men in Londinium he can talk to as an intellectual equal. The clerk reveals himself as the chief of the agentes in rebus (Imperial secret service) sworn to be loyal to the reigning emperor. He reveals that Constantine and Constans suspected Gratianus and Maria and pre-empted the plot by having them killed; Constantine will now declare himself emperor. He is required to arrest and interrogate Felix, but during the interregnum, he is technically masterless and he sympathetically gives Felix the opportunity to flee. Felix travels westwards through a country he has never seen and knows little about, only now does he realise how far the province has deteriorated. He has no survival skills and cannot communicate with the scattered peasants who speak only Celtic. But after many months, he meets a Celtic soldier who takes him to the court of his brother, the client-king of the province of Britannia Secunda. The king gives Felix sanctuary in return for writing a history of his family and himself for posterity. Felix eventually dies of grief and despair after hearing of the sack of Rome by Alaric. Meanwhile, Constantine and Constans have taken the remaining Roman troops from Britain to mount an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of the whole Western Empire. They are killed and their troops annihilated, and the Romano-British population are left to fend for themselves under client-kings such as the one served by Felix. Duggan emphasises the bureaucratic and authoritarian nature of the late Roman Imperial administration. (Felix constantly laments that the administration can only be supported by high taxes, which the population are unable to pay, after which taxes are raised still further to make up for the deficit; the characters take it for granted that society can only work if people are bound to their trades, and