“It is not lawful to be a Christian. ”These four words hung over the head of every Christian for the first three centuries of the nascent Church of the Christos, the God-man. In 116 AD during the reign of the Emperor Trajan, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria, heard those four words that sentenced him to death in the Roman Colosseum. His condemnation and martyrdom were witnessed by his closest friend, Gaius Segusiavus, the “Peregrine.” Throughout the course of twenty years, from that night in Antioch to a death under the noonday sun in the Colosseum, the lives of Gaius and Ignatius are increasingly intertwined: Ignatius the martyr who becomes one of the most famous and iconic of the early Church Fathers; Gaius who seeks understanding of his closest friend’s faith, while fearing the possibility of hearing those mortal four words. History and fiction meet in this story of the love of two “brothers” and the story of the Love that conquers both.