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A review by kjcharles
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar by Tom Holland
A hugely readable and clear account of the tangled politics of the House of Caesar (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero). It's extremely ghastly and bloody, in which Holland takes obvious relish, but this part of history is basically a horror comic, featuring a lot of utterly shitty people in a grotesque society, so. The telling is even-handed as far as that's possible, and the global, political and social context is all fleshed out very effectively. A rollicking read.
And quite a scary one, right now. It's hard not to read Caligula's open contempt for the Senate, his deliberate exposure of their mendacity and cowardice and self-serving, and not see parallels in the current US govt. Let alone the popular enthusiasm for Nero, because he was 'interesting' and 'fun'. This is how empires fall, clearly.
And quite a scary one, right now. It's hard not to read Caligula's open contempt for the Senate, his deliberate exposure of their mendacity and cowardice and self-serving, and not see parallels in the current US govt. Let alone the popular enthusiasm for Nero, because he was 'interesting' and 'fun'. This is how empires fall, clearly.