A review by mike_baker
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar by Tom Holland

4.0

A nice alternative to the dusty, ponderous academic tomes I ploughed through when studying this stuff at University. Those books held no brief to entertain, and yet the story they told is about as thrilling as literature can ever get, and it was all true. Holland writes for the reader who doesn't have a degree riding on the material, and weaves a hell of a yarn. Everything's here for a superb romp - dysfunctional family dynamics, matricide, regicide, suicide, other things ending in -cide, pomp, games of thrones, and the overarching theme of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Some of it will come across as almost unbelievable, and yet it was the reality of Rome in the first cycle of its Emperors, the self-destructive and in-fighting cohorts of the Julio-Claudian family, a more self-serving and loathsome group of characters it would be difficult to meet.