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8 October, AD 130. The body of a young man, still not 20, was found floating in the

Nile. Hulled out from the river, dragged through the silt left by the retreating floodwaters,

the corpse was brought to dry land. It was clear that the drowned man had been a figure striking

the out of the ordinary. His body was gym-toned. His proportions were perfect. His face possessed a

heart-stopping, almost supernatural beauty. Who was he? A foreigner, clearly. Yet the stretch of

the Nile in which he had drowned was hardly the haunt of glamorous foreigners. Alexandria lay far

to the north. Although there was an ancient temple adorned with squat pillars and the carvings

of a forgotten Pharaoh looming over the waters in which the young man had drowned, building

did not feature prominently in the roster of Egypt's tourist attractions. Nothing stood beside it,

save a scruffy village. Yet here, to this obscure and rural spot, Caesar himself had come.

Caesar, who ruled in Egypt as Pharaoh at once king and living God. His barge, together with a great

flotilla of other vessels, stood more than the shallows off the temple. Clearly then, the young man

found in the Nile could only have been of his party. And so it proved. So that absolutely brilliant

prose, which is from your forthcoming book Pax. This is absolutely not the third time I've had to

record this sentence because you were displeased with the original iterations. I want nothing but the

best for the listeners. I want them to know that Pax is now available for pre-order in the UK.

But this is not about advertising. This is about a dramatic episode in history.

This has could draw their own conclusions. Tom, tell us about the mystery. Make the mystery

...