Marcellus Gallio is a high-born, somewhat indolent Roman Tribune who gets shipped to the fractious province of Judaea, and is conscripted into helping execute a young Jewish man accused of treason and blasphemy. I hope most of us are familiar with the plot of The Robe, since it’s the basis for one of the most sweeping, epic films of Old Hollywood. This is as fine a novel as any produced by someone who had been scribbling since childhood. Douglas didn’t take up writing till he was fifty. In fact, I think I'll read it to my older children this winter. The characters, those who change by Christ's example even after his death, are of Attitus Finch quality. I was so sad when this book came to a bang of an end. All of the descriptions of lush Greek melon fields, sunny Roman plazas with fountains, and cool dimly-lit weavers' shops run by old out-spoken Jewish men, were bewitching.

The love story isn't half bad along the way either. Plus, I listened to this story as an audio book, and it was nice to hear an Australian accent enacting the Greek and Roman people. The whole while with an art history professor whispering into my ear. Douglas whisked me to the hills of Cana in a pair of dusty sandals, and dropped me down into the middle of the sunny, baren hills. The relationships and accounts of Christ's sermons from fictional eye-witnesses were mesmerizng.Īll of the accounts are what we've read about in the New Testament all our lives, but the fictional stories of how those teachings changed the lives of humble people in forsaken villages in a forsaken countryside made me understand how Christianity spread the world over, (regardless of the Romans trying to squelch it out) and how the influence of a few compassionate acts can slowly, quietly change mankind for generations exponentially.īesides, the details of life in Rome, Jerusalem, and Greece-in Christ's time-were intriguing. Langton is an actor and audiobook narrator.įor the first time, I feel like I have an inkling of what Christ's life was like, with whom he socialized, what he ate, saw, did, and where/and whom he taught. Stuart Langton does a good job narrating the book. The book is twenty-two hours and two minutes. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. This is a great old fashioned historical novel. The book is set in the first Century Rome and Judea.

The book is long which allows Douglas to build his characters in a large landscape. The story follows Gallio and his Greek slave, Demetrius, and how the robe affected their lives. Gallio won Christ’s robe as a gambling prize after the crucifixion. The story follows a Roman Officer, Marcellus Gallio. Back in the 1950s I read Douglas’s book “The Big Fisherman” and enjoyed it also. I thought it would be interesting to reread the book as I do not recall much about the details of the book. I think I have seen the movie a time or two. The book was originally published in 1942.

Book the robe by lloyd c douglas