This paper is devoted to the analysis of the Cauchy problem for a system of PDEs arising in radiative hydrodynamics. This system, which comes from the so-called equilibrium diffusion regime, is a variant of the usual Euler equations, where the energy and pressure functionals are modified to take into account the effect of radiation and the energy balance containing a nonlinear diffusion term acting on the temperature. The problem is studied in the multi-dimensional framework. The authors identify the existence of a strictly convex entropy and a stability property of the system, and check that the Kawashima-Shizuta condition holds. Then, based on these structure properties, the wellposedness close to a constant state can be proved by using fine energy estimates. The asymptotic decay of the solutions are also investigated.