The Twelve Caesars: The Dramatic Lives of the Emperors of Rome
Jun 2013 · Macmillan + ORM
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About this ebook
This vivid history of Rome and its rulers "combines thoughtful reflection and analysis with gossipy irreverence in a bewitching cocktail" ( Daily Express, UK).
One was a military genius, one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned, another earned the nickname "sphincter artist". Six of them were assassinated, two committed suicide—and five were considered gods. They are known as the "twelve Caesars" —Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Under their rule, from 49 BC to AD 96, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years.
In The Twelve Caesars, Matthew Dennison offers a revealing and colorful biography of each emperor, triumphantly evoking the luxury, license, brutality, and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith. But beyond recreating the lives, loves, and vices of these despots, psychopaths and perverts, he paints a portrait of an era of political and social revolution, of the bloody overthrow of a five-hundred-year-old political system and its replacement by a dictatorship which, against all the odds, succeeded more convincingly than oligarchic democracy in governing a vast empire.
One was a military genius, one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned, another earned the nickname "sphincter artist". Six of them were assassinated, two committed suicide—and five were considered gods. They are known as the "twelve Caesars" —Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Under their rule, from 49 BC to AD 96, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years.
In The Twelve Caesars, Matthew Dennison offers a revealing and colorful biography of each emperor, triumphantly evoking the luxury, license, brutality, and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith. But beyond recreating the lives, loves, and vices of these despots, psychopaths and perverts, he paints a portrait of an era of political and social revolution, of the bloody overthrow of a five-hundred-year-old political system and its replacement by a dictatorship which, against all the odds, succeeded more convincingly than oligarchic democracy in governing a vast empire.
This vivid history of Rome and its rulers "combines thoughtful reflection and analysis with gossipy irreverence in a bewitching cocktail" ( Daily Express, UK).
One was a military genius, one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned, another earned the nickname "sphincter artist". Six of...
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Ratings and reviews
1 review
Yvette Anderson
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November 17, 2014
Disappointing.
About the author
MATTHEW DENNISON is the author of the critically acclaimed The Last Princess and Livia, Empress of Rome. As a journalist, he contributes to The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Country Life, and The Spectator. He is married and lives in London and North Wales.
MATTHEW DENNISON is the author of the critically acclaimed The Last Princess and Livia, Empress of Rome. As a journalist, he contributes to The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Country Life, and The Spectator. He is married and lives in London and North Wales.
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