Enemies of humanity

The last novel by the famous Finnish author Mika Waltari, published during his lifetime, is set in Rome during the reigns of the emperors Claudius, Nero and Domitian. The author picks up his earlier story of the beginnings of Christianity as seen by a noble Roman, called His Kingdom. Waltari also gave its sequel, Enemies of Mankind, the form of a fictional memoir. The Roman horseman Minutus Lausus Manilianus, originally from Antioch, comes of age in Rome alongside the young Nero. It is here that he first encounters the Christians, considered in the first centuries after the turn of the millennium as "enemies of humanity". Throughout his life, his distrust of the new religion will be combined with the need to humanly help the condemned and rejected. He accompanies the apostles Peter and Paul on their last journey, and he himself will lose all his loved ones. Finally, as an old man, he has to witness the final frustration of his earthly dreams when his son, without reading his message, ends up in the arena.