The Twelve Caesars
About this audiobook
The personalities of the Twelve Caesars of ancient Rome—Julius Caesar and the first eleven Roman emperors who followed him—have profoundly impressed themselves upon the world. They bore the perilous responsibility of governing an empire comparable in its gigantic magnitude and diversity to the United States and the Soviet Union of the 1980s. It is a matter of perennial concern to investigate how the potentates who wield such vast might, and the men who advise them, cope with their task, or fail to cope with it. To what extent, for example, are we justified, after a study of the scorching pages of Tacitus, in applying to the Roman Caesar Lord Acton’s saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely? This is one of a number of questions relating to their exercise of authority to which Michael Grant—calling in additional sources of information such as coins and inscriptions—endeavors to answer.
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About the author
Michael Grant (1914-2004) was a historian whose over forty publications on ancient Rome and Greece popularized the classical and early Christian world. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, served in intelligence and as a diplomat during the Second World War, and afterwards became deputy director of the British Council’s European division, when he also published his first book. He later returned to academia, teaching at Cambridge and Edinburgh, and serving as vice chancellor at the University of Khartoum and at Queen’s University, Belfast. His many books include From Alexander to Cleopatra,The History of Ancient Israel,The Etruscans, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels,The History of Rome,The Classical Greeks,The Founders of the Western World, and The Twelve Caesars.
Wanda McCaddon began recording books for the fledgling audiobook industry in the early 1980s and has since narrated well over six hundred titles for major audio publishers, as well as abridging, narrating, and coproducing classic titles for her own company, Big Ben. Audiobook listeners may be familiar with her voice under one of her two "nom de mikes," Donada Peters and Nadia May. The recipient of an Audie Award and more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, AudioFile magazine has named her one of recording's Golden Voices. Wanda also appears regularly on the professional stage in the San Francisco Bay Area.
