The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
A Roman world of beauty, appetite, persecution, and hidden faith.
Marcus Vinicius
A young Roman soldier who first reaches for Lygia as a possession and learns to love by relinquishing control.
Rome
A marble city of temples and crowds where wanting the wrong person can get you killed.
Can a man half-dead from excess still reclaim the brilliance that rules Rome?
Read →Petronius Restored by the Bath
PETRONIUS woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied. The evening before he had been at one of Nero’s feasts, which was prolonged till late at night. For some time his health had been failing. He said himself that he woke up benumbed, as it were, and without power of collecting his thoughts. But the morning bath and careful kneading of the body by trained slaves hastened gradually the course of his slothful blood, roused him, quickened him, restored his strength, so that he issued from the elæothesium, that is, the last division of the bath, as if he had risen from the dead, with eyes gleaming from wit and gladness, rejuvenated, filled with life, exquisite, so unapproachable that Otho himself could not compare with him, and was really that which he had been called,--arbiter elegantiarum.
Petronius is introduced as a man who has to be manufactured each day. He wakes wearied and dull, his blood sluggish, unable to gather his thoughts, and only the machinery of the bath and the hands of trained slaves bring him back to life. This is the opening of the novel, and it tells us that the most polished man in Nero's Rome is not naturally brilliant; his sparkle is a thing that gets restored to him, like a resurrection performed daily. That he still outshines everyone is the joke and the point: even his revived self is untouchable.
Vinicius Desires Lygia
A young Roman patrician burns for the mysterious hostage Lygia and asks his worldly uncle Petronius to obtain her.
Lygia’s Fish Sign
A fish drawn in the dust, easy to miss and dangerous enough to betray a whole hidden faith.
Lygia / Callina
A foreign hostage raised in a Roman house, outwardly vulnerable and inwardly freer than those who command her.
Quo Vadis
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Quo Vadis World, as it plays on your phone
- Meet the people. 27 characters, each with a portrait, who they are and what they want.
- Walk the places. 22 places, each pictured, and what happens there.
- Follow the plot. The turns of the story, in order, so you always know where you are.
- Taste the original. 32 key passages in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s own words, each with a short reading of what it is doing.
- The complete book. Every word, in a reader made for your phone. From any passage, one tap opens the book at that very page.
Step inside Quo Vadis
Free, in your inbox in about a minute: the World and the complete book, on your phone.