Another historic book by Feuchtwanger... After the death of caesar Nero, Titus rules the Roman empire. But a plot by a former senator in Roman provinces in Syria "revives" Nero through an imposter who looks a lot like him.
This book is also based on historic quasi-facts, though it's difficult to judge what is true and what isn't - it will be interesting to investigate, as the Roman period interests me.
The book is written quite well and is pleasant to read. It has a very lucid exposition of politics, and how people are manipulated through politics. It also discusses human nature - sometimes people know that once they do something, a bad result is inevitable, but something in them still makes them do it.
Another think I noted about this book, I'm sure the author didn't mean it to be significant, but I'm just thinking about this a lot lately... How sexually explicit and "vulgar" the ancient society was. Some people say that the current times are very "open" from a sexual viewpoint. It's only so in comparison with the "dark ages" of Victorian culture in the past couple of centuries. What the ancients did would make today's "party kids" look pale :-)
It's a nice book, I will certainly try to put my hands on other books about the Roman empire.
Eli Bendersky's website