Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar by Tom Holland (PDF)

Description

In this dazzling portrait of Rome’s first imperial dynasty, Tom Holland traces the astonishing century-long story of the rise and fall of the Julio-Claudians—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Capturing both the brilliant allure of their rule and the blood-steeped shadows cast by their crimes, Dynasty travels from the great capital rebuilt in marble to the dank and barbarian forests of Germany. Populated by a spectacular cast: murderers and metrosexuals, adulterers and Druids, scheming grandmothers and reluctant gladiators, it vividly recreates the world of Rome after Julius Caesar. A tale of rule and ruination, Dynasty is the story of a family that transformed and stupefied the western world and that continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Startlingly visceral…. Holland has crafted a history of early Rome that has all the gripping detail and narrative momentum of a novel.” —The New York Times “Holland is a master of narrative history. On the strength of Dynasty, he deserves a laurel wreath.” —The Washington Post“Dynasty surely secures [Holland’s] place among the foremost writers of popular history practicing today…. His ability to operate at small and large scale simultaneously . . . is one of his great talents.” —The Wall Street Journal “Fascinating…. [Dynasty] has Holland’s usual novelistic ability to bring a narrative alive, together with his extraordinary command of ancient sources.” —Matt Ridley, The New York Times Book Review“[A] rollicking account of the Julio-Claudians…. A meditation on the enduring power and possibilities of storytelling.” —Financial Times “Excellent…. Engrossing…. [Holland] is a witty and skillful storyteller, capable of penning penetrating psychological portraits of the monsters who form his subject.” —New Statesman “Gripping.” —The New York Review of Books “A richly panoramic picture of Rome in the first century AD, dwelling on its manners and morals…. Holland writes about [his subjects] with great verve and insight.” —The Literary Review “Among the many virtues of Tom Holland’s terrific history is that he does not shrink from seeing the Roman emperors for what they were…. He knits the history of ancient Rome into his narrative—its founding myths, the fall of the republic, the religious superstitions—with a skill so dextrous you don’t notice the stitching. Dynasty is both a formidable effort to compile what we can know about the ancient world and a sensational story.” —The Observer (England) “A swaggering history of the dynastic house that Julius Caesar built.” —Sunday Express “Holland’s masterly account of this first wicked century of the Roman empire is, at its heart, a political analysis…. It is down to his skill as a storyteller that there’s no difficulty in imagining that it might all happen again tomorrow.” — The Sunday Times (London) “Thrilling…. [A] fast-paced historical narrative.” —Evening Standard “Brilliant, terrifying and compelling.” —Alex Preston, The Observer (England) “A wonderful, surging narrative—a brilliant and meticulous synthesis of the ancient sources…. This is a story that should be read by anyone interested in history, politics or human nature—and it has never been better told.” —The Mail on Sunday “Impressive…. First-rate ancient history and a compulsively good read…. This is history in which fact and fiction overlap, rigorously researched and lightened with dashes of humour.” —Daily Mail “A vivid account.” —Kirkus Reviews “A lurid, ripping yarn, peopled by characters whose propensity for self-indulgence, cruelty and sheer tyrannical excess has not lost its ability to shock.” —Sydney Morning Herald About the Author Tom Holland is a historian of the ancient world and a translator. His books include Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, Persian Fire, In the Shadow of the Sword and The Forge of Christendom. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to “the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilization of Ancient Greece and Rome.” He lives in London with his family. Visit the author’s website at www.tom-holland.org. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. AD 40. It is early in the year. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus sits on a lofty platform beside the Ocean. As waves break on the shore and spray hangs in the air, he gazes out to sea. Many Roman ships over the years have been lost to its depths. Strange monsters are rumoured to lurk in its grey waters, while beyond the horizon there lies an island teeming with savage and mustachioed head-hunters: Britain. Perils such as these, lurking as they do on the very margins of civilisation, are fit to challenge even the boldest and most iron-willed hero. The story of the Roman people, though, has always had about it an aura of the epic. They have emerged from dim and provincial obscurity to the command of the world: a feat like no other in history. Repeatedly put to trial, repeatedly surviving it triumphant, Rome has been well steeled for global rule. Now, seven hundred and ninety-two years after her founding, the man who ranks as her emperor wields power worthy of a god. Lined up alongside him on the northern beach are rank upon rank of the most formidable fighting force on the planet: armour-clad legionaries, catapults, battlefield artillery. The Emperor Gaius scans their length. He gives a command. At once, there is a blaring of trumpets. The signal for battle. Then silence. The Emperor raises his voice. ‘Soldiers!’ he cries. ‘I command you to pick up shells. Fill your helmets with the spoils of the Ocean.’ And the legionaries, obedient to their emperor’s order, do so. Such, at any rate, is the story. But is it true? Did the soldiers really pick up shells? And if they did – why? The episode is one of the most notorious in the life of a man whose entire career remains to this day a thing of infamy. Caligula, the name by which the Emperor Gaius is better known, is one of the few people from ancient history to be as familiar to pornographers as to classicists. The scandalous details of his reign have always provoked prurient fascination. ‘But enough of the emperor; now to the monster.’ So wrote Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, a scholar and archivist in the imperial palace who doubled in his spare time as a biographer of the Caesars, and whose life of Caligula is the oldest extant one that we possess. Written almost a century after the Emperor’s death, it catalogues a quite sensational array of depravities and crimes. He slept with his sisters! He dressed up as the goddess Venus! He planned to award his horse the highest magistracy in Rome! Set against the background of such stunts, Caligula’s behaviour on the Channel coast comes to seem a good deal less surprising. Suetonius certainly had no problem in explaining his behaviour. ‘He was ill in both body and mind.’ But if Caligula was sick, then so too was Rome. The powers of life and death wielded by an emperor would have been abhorrent to an earlier generation. Almost a century before Caligula massed his legions on the shores of the Ocean and gazed out to Britain, his great-great-great-great-uncle had done the same – and then actually crossed the Channel. The exploits of Gaius Julius Caesar had been as spectacular as any in his city’s history: not only two invasions of Britain but the permanent annexation of Gaul, as the Romans called what today is France. He had achieved his feats, though, as a citizen of a republic – one in which it was taken for granted by most that death was the only conceivable alternative to liberty. When Julius Caesar, trampling down this presumption, had laid claim to a primacy over his fellow citizens, it had resulted first in civil war, and then, after he had crushed his domestic foes as he had previously crushed the Gauls, in his assassination. Only after two more murderous bouts of slaughtering one another had the Roman people finally been inured to their servitude. Submission to the rule of a single man had redeemed their city and its empire from self-destruction – but the cure itself had been a kind of sickness. Augustus, their new master had called himself, ‘The Divinely Favoured One’. The great-nephew of Julius Caesar, he had waded through blood to secure the command of Rome and her empire – and then, his rivals once dispatched, had coolly posed as a prince of peace. As cunning as he was ruthless, as patient as he was decisive, Augustus had managed to maintain his supremacy for decades, and then to die in his bed. Key to this achievement had been his ability to rule with rather than against the grain of Roman tradition: for by pretending that he was not an autocrat, he had licensed his fellow citizens to pretend that they were still free. A veil of shimmering and seductive subtlety had been draped over the brute contours of his dominance. Time, though, had seen this veil become increasingly threadbare. On Augustus’s death in AD 14, the powers that he had accumulated over the course of his long and mendacious career stood revealed, not as temporary expediencies, but rather as a package to be handed down to an heir. His choice of successor had been a man raised since childhood in his own household, an aristocrat by the name of Tiberius. The many qualities of the new Caesar, which ranged from exemplary aristocratic pedigree to a track record as Rome’s finest general, had counted for less than his status as Augustus’s adopted son – and everyone had known it. Tiberius, a man who all his life had been wedded to the virtues of the vanished Republic, had made an unhappy monarch; but Caligula, who had succeeded him in turn after a reign of twenty-three years, was unembarrassed. That he ruled the Roman world by virtue neither of age nor of experience, but as the great-grandson of Augustus, bothered him not the slightest. ‘Nature produced him, in my opinion, to demonstrate just how far unlimited vice can go when combined with unlimited power.’ Such was the obituary delivered on him by Seneca, a philosopher who had known him well. The judgement, though, was not just on Caligula, but on Seneca’s own peers, who had cringed and grovelled before the Emperor while he was still alive, and on the Roman people as a whole. The age was a rotten one: diseased, debased, degraded. Or so many believed. Not everyone agreed. The regime established by Augustus would never have endured had it failed to offer what the Roman people had come so desperately to crave after decades of civil war: peace and order. The vast agglomeration of provinces ruled from Rome, which stretched from the North Sea to the Sahara, and from the Atlantic to the Fertile Crescent, reaped the benefits as well. Three centuries on, when the nativity of the most celebrated man to have been born in Augustus’s reign stood in infinitely clearer focus than it had done at the time, a bishop named Eusebius could see in the Emperor’s achievements the very guiding hand of God. ‘It was not just as a consequence of human action,’ he declared, ‘that the greater part of the world should have come under Roman rule at the precise moment Jesus was born. The coincidence that saw our Saviour begin his mission against such a backdrop was undeniably arranged by divine agency. After all – had the world still been at war, and not united under a single form of government, then how much more difficult would it have been for the disciples to undertake their travels.’ Eusebius could see, with the perspective provided by distance, just how startling was the feat of globalisation brought to fulfilment under Augustus and his successors. Brutal though the methods deployed to uphold it were, the sheer immensity of the regions pacified by Roman arms was unprecedented. ‘To accept a gift,’ went an ancient saying, ‘is to sell your liberty.’ Rome held her conquests in fee; but the peace that she bestowed upon them in exchange was not necessarily to be sniffed at. Whether in the suburbs of the capital itself, booming under the Caesars to become the largest city the world had ever seen, or across the span of the Mediterranean, united now for the first time under a single power, or in the furthermost corners of an empire whose global reach was without precedent, the pax Romana brought benefits to millions. Provincials might well be grateful. ‘He cleared the sea of pirates, and filled it with merchant shipping.’ So a Jew from the great Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria, writing in praise of Augustus, enthused. ‘He gave freedom to every city, brought order where there had been chaos, and civilised savage peoples.’Similar hymns of praise could be – and were – addressed to Tiberius and Caligula. The depravities for which both men would end up notorious rarely had much impact on the world at large. It mattered little in the provinces who ruled as emperor – just so long as the centre held. Nevertheless, even in the furthest reaches of the Empire, Caesar was a constant presence. How could he not be? ‘In the whole wide world, there is not a single thing that escapes him.’ An exaggeration, of course – and yet due reflection of the mingled fear and awe that an emperor could hardly help but inspire in his subjects. He alone had command of Rome’s monopoly of violence: the legions and the whole menacing apparatus of provincial government, which existed to ensure that taxes were paid, rebels slaughtered, and malefactors thrown to beasts or nailed up on crosses. There was no need for an emperor constantly to be showing his hand for dread of his arbitrary power to be universal across the world. Small wonder, then, that the face of Caesar should have become, for millions of his subjects, the face of Rome. Rare was the town that did not boast some image of him: a statue, a portrait bust, a frieze. Even in the most provincial backwater, to handle money was to be familiar with Caesar’s profile. Within Augustus’s own lifetime, no living citizen had ever appeared on a Roman coin; but no sooner had he seized control of the world than his face was being minted everywhere, stamped on gold, and silver, and bronze. ‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?’ Even an itinerant street-preacher in the wilds of Galilee, holding up a coin and demanding to know whose face it portrayed, could be confident of the answer: ‘Caesar’s.’ No surprise, then, that the character of an emperor, his achievements, his relationships and his foibles, should have been topics of obsessive fascination to his subjects. ‘Your destiny it is to live as in a theatre where your audience is the entire world.’9 Such was the warning attributed by one Roman historian to Maecenas, a particularly trusted confidant of Augustus’s. Whether he really said it or not, the sentiment was true to the sheer theatricality of his master’s performance. Augustus himself, lying on his deathbed, was reported by Suetonius to have asked his friends whether he had played his part well in the comedy of life; and then, on being assured that he had, to have demanded their applause as he headed for the exit. A good emperor had no choice but to be a good actor – as too did everyone else in the drama’s cast. Caesar, after all, was never alone on the stage. His potential successors were public figures simply by virtue of their relationship to him. Even the wife, the niece or the granddaughter of an emperor might have her role to play. Get it wrong, and she was liable to pay a terrible price; but get it right, and her face might end up appearing on coins alongside Caesar’s own. No household in history had ever before been so squarely in the public eye as that of Augustus. The fashions and hairstyles of its most prominent members, reproduced in exquisite detail by sculptors across the Empire, set trends from Syria to Spain. Their achievements were celebrated with spectacularly showy monuments, their scandals repeated with relish from seaport to seaport. Propaganda and gossip, each feeding off the other, gave to the dynasty of Augustus a celebrity that ranked, for the first time, as continent-spanning. To what extent, though, did all the vaunting claims chiselled into showy marble and all the rumours whispered in marketplaces and bars approximate to what had actually happened in Caesar’s palace? To be sure, by the time that Suetonius came to write his biographies of the emperors, there was no lack of material for him to draw upon: everything from official inscriptions to garbled gossip. Shrewder analysts, though, when they sought to make sense of Augustus and his heirs, could recognise at the heart of the dynasty’s story a darkness that mocked and defied their efforts. Once, back in the days of the Republic, affairs of state had been debated in public, and the speeches of Rome’s leaders transcribed for historians to study; but with the coming to power of Augustus, all that had changed. ‘For, from then on, things began to be done secretly, and in such a way as not to be made public.’ Yes, the old rhythms of the political year, the annual cycle of elections and magistracies that once, back in the days of the Republic, had delivered to ambitious Romans the genuine opportunity to sway their city’s fate, still endured – but as a largely irrelevant sideshow. The cockpit of power lay elsewhere now. The world had come to be governed, not in assemblies of the great and good, but in private chambers. A woman’s whisperings in an emperor’s ear, a document discreetly passed to him by a slave: either might have a greater impact than even the most ringing public oration. The implication, for any biographer of the Caesars, was grim but inescapable. ‘Even when it comes to notable events, we are in the dark.’ Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The author doesn’t quite hit the high watermark of his best work, Rubicon, and the narrative is occasionally a little rushed – but a very readable, with some delightful prose.4.5 stars

⭐”Dynasty” is a trip through well-traveled country. My own shelves have a dozen books on similar subjects, ranging from Suetonius and Tacitus to modern works by Alan Massie and Robert Graves. The Julio-Claudian era seems to be ever-popular, and for good reasons. Politically, it provides a fascinating study of what can happen to a republic that goes wrong. And then there are lots of good sexy bits, too. Generations of schoolboys have found excitement in their classical studies, when they discovered the randy parts of Suetonius. They are good for keeping up one’s interest, when otherwise things might be getting dull.The question is, why yet another book? In what way does this treatment differ from all the others? Well, Mr. Holland is a modernizer. His intent seems to be to render the imperial history in a modern idiom, so it will be understandable to readers today. To this end, he avoids the use of Latin names and expressions, and uses modern jargon. This does allow him to draw similarities between ancient figures and modern-day politicians, thugs, and mafiosi. It is a rather surreptitious process: he doesn’t exactly say “So-and-so was like a mafia capo,” he just implies it through the use of vocabulary. And I fear this may be misleading. After all, the ancients were quite different from us; they thought and behaved in different ways, and had thoroughly different morals and standards of behavior. It is an oversimplification and something of an error to interpret them as though they were living now.On the other hand, this is a richly researched book, full of interesting detail–perhaps the most thorough of its kind. It may shade ever so slightly over into the novelistic: there are incidents, speeches, and rhetorical flourishes that seem unlikely to exist in the ancient sources. But when you have read this book, you will–unless you have read and remember the entire corpus of Roman writers–know more about the period than when you started. As a consequence it is long and slow-paced; and toward the end, with Nero’s reign, becomes downright tedious. (Perhaps by this time we have simply had enough of madness, cruelty, and sexual deviance.) If what you want is an enjoyable, exciting read, it would be better to start with the excellent semi-fictional writers: Robert Graves would be a good choice, or (for a slightly earlier historical period) Robert Harris. But for those who are interested in politics and psychology, and who wonder at how we have ever gotten to where we are today–this book has something to add. I will find room for it on my overcrowded shelf.

⭐This is interesting and certainly well-written. The author has a terrific command of English and has a florid manner of writing, which means it’s not a quick read but certainly an entertaining one. He narrates the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. They are presented such that it’s pretty much a steady and sometimes astonishing decline from Tiberius onward. He relies on original sources, which is great, but there are drawbacks, i.e. they all had their own reasons for writing (reflections of the time in which they lived), axes to grind, or emperors to pander to as the case may be. Seutonius, for example, is famous for being a gossip and the author appears to take whatever spurious rumors, substantiated or not, at face value even though he reminds us now and then that such reports are to be taken with a grain of salt.

⭐This guy may be a pretty good amateur critic of the faux Pax Romana, but I think he is missing some foundational issues.He doesn’t get the issue of the Cleopatran Cult of ISIS connection with Ceasar and Marc Antony and how this created a foundation that could never last.You can see this in this Op-Ed he wrote in the NYT: […]To tell this tale you have to illustrate the contrast between the consequences of Boudicca’s rebellion v. the consequences of Cleopatra’s seduction, as well as the contrast between Elizabeth I v. Holy Roman Empire Queens Consort and thousands of years of similar contrasting event.The core issue at stake today: the English laws of parental responsibility (and the English Midlands Copernican discovery of DNA making paternity provable as maternity) being in conflict with the EU Treaty legal fiction of “virgin birth”, which traces from the Roman Empire and the first Cult of ISIS.The Brits weren’t barbarous, they actually had/have more civilized laws than the Romans, I think.Today, though, they do need to update their own parental responsibility law with their own scientific advance of DNA discovery, to give every child the self-executing right to have his/her bio parents listed on the birth cert (currently fathers not married to the birth mother are not responsible unless someone steps on behalf of the child, including he father himself).

⭐Nothing short of sensationalist, “DYNASTY” is a brilliantly written biography about one of the most scandalous Houses to eve rule their own world and establish the Empire that continues to be celebrated and fascinate us thousands of years after its inception, creation, and ultimately, its fall. As a result, the author doesn’t leave any stone unturned which is a good thing, or something to take as caution if you’re new to this subject. History isn’t whitewashed, but neither are all of the written sources taken at face value. Tom Holland does what a good historians does and that is assess, dissect and take into account various viewpoints and inform his readers.

⭐This should have been a wonderfully interesting historical narrative of a fascinating family. On reading the 30 plus reviews of the book both online and in the book itself, the expectation is that it is a stupendous read. Yet it is not. The historical detail and obvious research is remarkable. The fault lies in the writing style which detracts so much from the storyline, that I was fighting to finish it rapidly. The language is often theatrical, flowery and verbose thus succeeeding in being the focus, whereas the story should be. The book was of interest because of its historical content surrounding a remarkable family. However, the writing style was such a disappointment that I shall not read another of Holland’s books and that is a pity because his subject matter is of interest.

⭐Over the years I’ve read many popular history books about the Roman Empire and the Republic but I continue to be pleasantly surprised how modern authors manage to portray the period or specific elements in a fresh light. Tom Holland also holds the top spot among my favourite historical writers as some of his other works like Rubricon and Millenium left a lasting impression not least because of his narrative prosaic form of writing.Dynasty is not dissimilar and its prose is presented with the same authority. The book starts where Rubicon ended, with the death of Caesar to lay the foundation of the phenomenal history of the first five emperors. The book manages to unburden itself from the perceptions of either classical or modern historians. And so the reader gets Holland’s interpretation of for example how Octavian first converts himself from a battlefield-coward and bloodthirsty co-tyrant to a divine imperial blueprint while forging the Julio-Claudian dynasty – all through his excellent strategic insight and careful manoeuvring of public opinion. It’s a compelling view that would justify Augustus’ preeminent position among the emperors.From that point on the real, though much more well-known, juice starts; Augustus’ succession issues, his relationship with his daughter Julia, the controversial character of Tiberius (painted here in a relatively favourable light) ect. It’s all material that would fit in perfectly in a Game of Thrones scenario even before it starts to address the cruel antics of Caligula and Nero.So to me it was a very lively, refreshing read, that is once more particularly well told. Yet its not academic as the author tends to make assumptions and little is questioned, but for that reason it reads well and I guess I was prepared for that. As such I thoroughly enjoyed this work.

⭐When I encounter great historical fiction (HBO’s Rome and BBC’s I, Claudius), I often hope to find a good academic treatment to compare and deepen my perception of them. This book is perfect for that. Holland has strong opinions that he advances with evidence from the ancient sources yet never gets caught up in obscure controversies or proofs. You get Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero in context, with evaluations of their careers and legacies. As a Rome history buff, this was a great pleasure to read.It starts with Octavius, who was Julius Caesar’s great nephew and later adopted son. Having observed Caesar’s assassination by outraged aristocrats, Octavius was careful to observe the forms of the Republic in piecemeal grants of powers from the Senate, but in reality he was an autocrat supported by military force. His marriage to Livia, whom Holland does not portray as the monster of mini-series, united the Julian family with the stolid Claudians; it enhanced his legitimacy. In exchange for the maintenance of order and peace on his terms – a welcome relief after a century of violent civil conflict and frequent governmental paralysis – Octavius (renamed Augustus) imposed his vision on Roman society, first by proscribing (conveniently rich) enemies and then in wholesale slaughter in a war with Antony.Augustus’ vision was essentially conservative. Rome should return to its ancient virtues of austerity, martial discipline, and family values, minus disorderly things like the Republic. Though avoiding the appearance of a monarchy, he was constantly in search an heir in his immediate family to whom he could pass power. To maintain his political ascendance, he created a number of institutional precedents that were to have consequences in later years. First, the Senate gradually lost much of its power, in essence it became a rubber stamp that provided legitimacy to his usurpations. Second, he relied on military force for his real power, in particular the Praetorian Guard, which broke precedent in functioning fully armed within the city limits. Third, with the lengthy tenure of the executive and his dependent appointees, the scope of political maneuver was narrowed to a tiny inner circle of courtiers, such as Agrippa. Fourth, he was viewed as a living god, also adding to his legitimacy and placing the Emperor at the heart of local ritual at the expense of (or competing with) local deities and traditions.Once Tiberius took over, he tried to follow a mix of the old ways with Augustus’ innovations. In Holland’s opinion, he was the greatest general of his generation as well as a moderate traditionalist. Unfortunately, as a military man, he lacked Augustus’ finesse in management of the Senate and so discounted it further. It was only towards the end of his reign that his hold on power (and perhaps reality) began to slip, especially after he permanently quit Rome for Capri. This enabled the Praetorian Guard to emerge as a major player in increasingly murderous courtier battles, its backing seen as so essential that any heir had to cultivate their loyalty with bribes. It was in Capri that he allowed Caligula to flourish, after having killed or exiled the rest of this family. As such, Caligula abandoned the last trappings of the Republic, opening claiming absolute power and Godhead for himself, humiliating the remaining aristocrats for amusement while neglecting the Empire.Caligula’s assassination confirmed the primacy of the Praetorian Guard, which essentially chose to thrust the much-scorned Claudius into power. Because he was relatively competent, it appears, it was during his Principat that the last hope for a restoration of the Republic died. His successor, Nero, was also a creature of the isolated Court, much as Caligula had been without the psychotic excess, though he did murder his mother and many other members of this family. With his assassination, Rome openly emerged as a military autocracy, with the army and Praetorian Guard as the ultimate arbiters of who became Emperor.Holland wades into many of the controversies surrounding the Emperors. The role of women, for example, is briefly examined. Livia was a dutiful matron, Messalina (Claudius’s wife) a power-hungry shrew, and Agrippina (Nero’s mum) a savage courtier. The sexual excesses of the Emperors are also discussed, many dismissed as propaganda. I would have wanted much more detail in these areas, but Holland holds back to what can be known.Unfortunately, the book ends abruptly, without much examination of what followed in terms of institutions and the men that operated them. I.e. there wasn’t enough analysis for me. This is a narrative history, of course, so perhaps I shouldn’t have hoped for more. A very fun read nonetheless and accurate so far as I can see. Recommended.

⭐At first, I was not sure that I would be able to get into Tom Holland’s writing style. Not because there was anything necessarily wrong with it, but because I was expecting a more scholarly, even dry approach. About twenty pages in, I could not put this book down, and when I did, I could not wait to get back to it.From Augustus to Nero, we are led through the reigns of Rome’s most infamous family in a seamless manner that reads more like a novel than a history. It is deeply engaging, and even those of us that like to think we know a lot about ancient Rome will definitely learn new things by the end of this book. From start to finish, some of history’s most fascinating and disturbing people are brought to life in a way that makes them more human and real than I ever thought they could feel. I will be reading plenty more of Holland’s work after this.

⭐Gaius Octavius – or Imperator Caesar Augustus, as he was later immodestly if justifiably renamed – was not only the greatest politician of his age but perhaps the greatest of all time. After successfully fighting for his inheritance, he ended the civil wars that had wracked Rome for decades, brought peace, prosperity and stability to an empire (which he enlarged), and died in his bed an old man.But there was a price paid, at the time and in future. Rome’s peace was bought at the cost of liberty: the precedents of political proscriptions and forfeitures early in his ascendancy could not be undone. Worse, his system worked only because it had a genius at the centre who understood the subtleties and contradictions within it and who had the skill and restraint to keep it in balance: requirements beyond his successors.For all that Dynasty tackles one of the most Roman of subjects, it has at its heart a Greek tragedy: that Augustus’ rise to heroic status had within it the seeds of his own House’s demise.Holland tells the epic story with verve and a very human touch. He is as at home narrating the smells and dangers of the dirt-clogged backstreets of Rome’s nightlife as he is explaining the geopolitical considerations of Rome’s struggle with the Parthians for influence in Armenia; as happy parading the sexual norms of Rome’s elite as to describe the relevance of the city’s ancient mythology to the population’s thinking and expectations. It’s an outstanding work, with the leading players brought dazzlingly to life. Nor does Holland scrimp on the supporting cast: senators, concubines, drinking companions and the rest, even if they only receive fleeting mentions, are continually made people rather than just names.Frequently, Holland delivers his tale with his trademark biting sarcasm and irony. It’s an effective and occasionally cruel technique. Compared with another of Holland’s books that I’ve read – In the Shadow of the Sword, his masterful account of the origins of Islam – that irony’s toned down here, which is perhaps no bad thing. On the other hand, compared with that other book, I found far less to surprise or shock me here, though that’s probably not Holland’s fault: this subject is far better known.However, despite that, he does tell the tale of hubris and nemesis, of peace and power and the rise and fall of the House of Caesar, in a way that illuminated the subject in a different way. To take one example, we often picture Augustus as he wanted us to picture him: the young man with his arm raised in gracious acknowledgement. But for half his pre-eminence, he was in his fifties or older; he died in his mid-seventies. Holland brings this elderly Augustus, aware of his mortality, back out of the shadows. Similarly, Caligula and Nero – whilst Holland parades their excesses and cruelties with enthusiasm – receive a much more balanced account than popular history would give them. Monsters they might have been and diligent they might not but their reigns were not wholly blood-soaked orgies.Overall, Dynasty is a very readable book that packs a great deal into its 420 pages and does so with style and humour. Well worth reading.

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