The Twelve Caesars

by Michael Grant

Book Overview

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 formed the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0760700885
• ISBN13: 9780760700884
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Publishing
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Roman emperors come to life

This is my first time reading a Michael Grant book. I'll agree with other reviewers that his writing style is a little difficult to follow. He routinely makes five sentences into one which sometimes leaves you forgetting the subject of the sentence before you reach the end. Despite this I find his analysis of Roman history and its historians very interesting. The Twelve Caesars recaps the lives of the first twelve emperors of Rome. Starting with Julius Caesar's takeover of Rome as dictator and continues recounting the lives of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero), the short lives of the civil war emperors (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius), and the Flavian dynasty (Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian). The book is written in chronological order with the beginning of each chapter giving a quick synopsis of how the emperor came to power, the major events of his life, and how he met his end. I felt all of these were well written and made the rest of story much easier to understand despite Grant's difficult writing style. The meat of the story provided by Grant is the work of the Roman historians, but what makes the book important is Grant's evaluation of the historical records provided on the emperors based on the prejudices and politics of the writers. Reading Suetonius, Tacitus, or Dio Cassius in a vacuum would lead the reader into an erroneous view of their lives, but Grant digs through the stories and tries to reflect the most likely truth. Of course, Grant would be the first to say that even his well researched analysis may not always be correct since the lives of the Caesars were cloaked in secrecy. This is a great addition to anyone interested in ancient history, Rome, or even the mind of a dictator. Grant's forward is enlightening in itself. His logical evaluation of the character and actions of the emperors gave me an appreciation for their challenges and abilities. I recommend reading as much of the ancient historians as possible, but having a modern evaluation of the subject is equally important.

Out of Print?

I don't think this book is out of print anymore because I recently bought the hardcover edition (new) at a big chain store. You can get it used as well. Anyway, I finally finished this thing. It took awhile to read because I found myself cross referencing a few of the chapters with Grant's recommended reading list and I ended up reading three other books while I was reading this one. Overall a very good volume and an easy one to read if you are a novice in classical history. Grant has always done a great job with somehow making a complex topic easy to read for the masses. He covers the first twelve emperors adequately, but to get more out of each one you really need to purchase a separate book on each of the emperors. I liked this book because it gave a good overview of each of them and I was intrigued enough about the lives of a few of them to go out and buy an additional book. If you want a good overview of the emperors without much detail then this is a great book, but it lacks depth into the time period for obvious reasons. You could not cover everything in a volume this size. It is a good book to get you started and to find out what aspect of ancient Rome you are interested in.

More Sober than Suetonius

Grant's "The Twelve Caesars" is an excellent resource through which to learn about the first twelve Roman "emperors" - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. I say "emperors" in quotes because, as Grant so ably explains, the early Roman rulers, starting with Caesar Augustus, maintained every pretense that they were merely guardians of a republic. Even the word "imperator" was ambiguous. But as time went on, largely through the political genius of Augustus, the system evolved into de jure as well as a de facto imperial rule. Grant debunks as propaganda most of the salacious gossip surrounding the Caesars - which, to any of us familiar with the story of Tiberius and his "minnows," is a little disconcerting. But truth is vastly more interesting than fiction, and Grant delivers it in abundance.

Poisoners Abound (Including the Author)

With his many accounts of poisoners, Suetonius fails to disclose his own, highly political, objective of poisoning the well against the early Caesars. Much of his work is EXTREMELY amusing (Tiberius's proclivities are particularly titilating), and SOME of the more scandalous materials might be true in part. Caligula's excesses MIGHT have included the appointment of a horse to the Senate, but more as a misguided act of satire than from any strange belief in equine legislative ability. All in all, reading this is like reading Shakespeare's Richard III - while there is truth in the text, its overarching purpose is to please a later regime. Still, he puts the show business back into the biography business, and readers will be eternally grateful for this.