The first volume of a dazzling trilogy, THE KEY shows a world on the verge of collapse through the eyes of its greatest and most passionate poet. Gaius Valerius Catullus, the boy from the provinces who became the lover of the most powerful and beautiful married woman in Rome, is dead at twenty-nine. His friend Marcus Caelius Rufus must search for the meaning of his life in the slums and bloody secret cults, the palaces and law courts of the tottering Roman Republic. Vivid, exciting, carefully researched and beautifully written, THE KEY has been a cult favorite in hardbound for years. Jaro inserts English translations of and comments on Catullus' poems into the text of her novel, The Key.