In AD8, Augustus banished the poet Ovid to Tomi, on the Black Sea. In spite of repeated appeals by his friends in Rome for the sentence to be revoked, he died in exile ten years later.

No one knows why Ovid was banished.

The most convincing explanation is that Ovid was involved somehow with the emperor's granddaughter Julia, who was exiled the same year for immorality. However, Julia's sexual partner was sentenced to nothing worse than social ostracism. Her husband, on the other hand, was executed shortly afterwards for treason ...

Why should the witness to a crime be punished far more harshly than the person who committed it? And why - was he not allowed to return to Rome with the other exiles on Tiberius's accession?

All these questions are debated and explained in a lively and dramatic way by Marcus Corvinus, an engaging mixture of Philip Marlowe and a Roman hooray Henry, who adds a new dimension to the ranks of literary sleuths.