This new illustrated edition of the 2013 first edition differs in that it breaks at the death of Augustus. Then considers his cult, and that of the subsequent emperors, through to the take over by the Christian Church four hundred years later. As in the previous edition, it demonstrates Augustus’s died in year 8, six years earlier that Christian historians wanted him to.

Saint Luke wrote his Gospel for noble Theophilus, or Theophila in some versions. Chapter 3 begins with John the Baptist and Jesus beginning their missions in the 15th year of Tiberius reign. Christian historians, priests to a man, had both as priests, which they weren’t. You could not be a priests under 30 years of age. As Augustus’s Anno Domini calendar was supposedly started to mark the year of Jesus’s birth, which it wasn’t, Augustus had to die in the year 14.

In fact nothing is known of the activities of Augustus from 8 to 14 AD. He issued no coins, built no marble buildings to further grace Rome, attended no functions or ceremonies, reviewed no armies. Then, during the 100 days before his death he was being hyperactive as normal.