Rome in the first century AD - the powerful Roman Empire stretches across three continents. After a long period of civil conflict, Rome saw its governance pass from a republican system to one under the mastery of an individual, the Emperor, whose position was meant to embody the stability of the state. Yet when this happened, political conflict unfolded within the halls and dark recesses of the imperial palace, which became a place of conspiracies, brutalities, deception and all sorts of decadence.

This is the bloodstained story of the first emperors of Rome. From Tiberius, the reluctant emperor who retired on the island of Capri to indulge in sexual perversion of every kind, to Caligula, the notorious and macabre emperor; from Nero, who murdered his own mother and became the archetypal antichrist, to Domitian, who ushered a reign of terror, Carmel Serracino and Jordan Sant weave together the grim stories of the first Roman emperors in their new book, Bawxati u Reati tal-Imperaturi Rumani tal-Ewwel Seklu WK, published by Kite Group. This work explores the emperors' lives of depravity and heinous crimes, often ending in violent deaths.

Assisting Serracino and Sant in this compilation of accounts one finds historical writers from Ancient Rome, including Suetonius, Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Flavius Josephus and Seneca, many passages of whose works are being translated for the first time into Maltese from Latin or Ancient Greek, their original languages.