Beginning with the shipwreck of a Roman honorary ship, the novel tells the story of a family brought to life during one of the most tormented periods in the thousand-year history of Rome: that of the civil wars that preceded the death of Julius Caesar and up to the birth of the empire, when Rome became stronger than ever. We find people sprung from the author's imagination, interacting with characters and facts that really existed in that historical period. Everything is integrated and united in such a way as to create a harmonious amalgam, almost as if it were the sequence of images in a film. Amidst intense love affairs, mysteries and bloody battles, the novel's fast-paced plot unfolds and, in the end, we will also discover what that lead from two thousand years ago was used for today. It was with the coming to power of Emperor Octavian Augustus - one of the characters in the book - that the great reforms and the gigantic plan to transform the city were decided upon. Thus were born the main monuments of what everyone agrees to call 'The Great Beauty', which, together with hope, is the message that the novel sets out to spread.