From sun surfer:
1)The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder (about Julius Caesar and in epistolary form, and I loved Thornton's Bridge of San Luis Rey)
2)Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (set in the much more modern Italy, but still in the centre of where the Roman Empire had been and by an Italian descended from Romans, and referencing Christ who of course was famously tangled up in the Roman Empire)
I thought of these too, especially because I already own the Levi book, but they seem to have limited availability as an ebook geographically.
