Inspiration to read: NYTBR Nov 22 2015. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/books/review/mary-beards-spqr-and-tom-holla...

In the follow up to his Rubicon, Holland takes up the story of the legendary Julio-Claudian emperors. With 419 pages of text, he covers all the stories of treachery, torture, matricide, fratricide, sexual depravity, assassinations, mutinies, and excess you’ve heard. To that, he explains how Roman sexual mores, religious festivals, family relations, and the plebians’ continued fascination with the dynasty that started with Julius Caesar played a part in everything.

And Holland, particularly in the chapter on Tiberius, “The Last Roman”, approaches his emperors in an empathetic if not sympathetic way.
The prose is stylish with Holland sometimes using very modern terms to give us the flavor of the strange and also familiar Roman imperial culture. He deftly shows how Rome’s own myths reveal something of their character. Specifically, Romans held their race started with a rape, and its resulting issue was suckled by wolves.

In the book’s pages, you find an emperor who tearfully and theatrically threw himself on the mercy of the Roman public (Augusta), an emperor who never wanted the job and descended into an old age of watching aristocratic children recruit mythological sex scenes (Tiberius), an emperor always ready for a very malicious and deadly joke on an aristocrat (Caligula), an emperor incestuously besotted with his niece (Claudius), and an emperor under the domineering thumb of his mother (Nero). But Holland doesn’t skimp on covering the other power players at this time, particularly the eventually divine wife of Augusta, Livia. She may have been married to Augustus, but her primary interest was always furthering the glory of her own family, the Claudians.

But Holland isn’t just writing an update of Suetonius’ salacious Twelve Caesars. He shows the change in Roman politics, how the Roman people and Senate were tamed, first by smooth talk, legal legerdemain, flattery and then open terror into accepting what they long despised – a king. It is a story dependent on the magical place the dynasty of Caesar had in the mind of the Roman public and “the exhaustion of cruelty” after decades of civil war.

Besides the usual index, bibliography, and maps, a dramatis personae list is included as well as numerous family trees so you can keep of the players through numerous banishments, executions, divorces and remarriages, and assassinations.

Recommended to readers with any degree of familiarity with this era of Roman history. ( )

A fantastic, comprehensive and well researched overview of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. At over 400 pages, the author presents a thorough yet easy reading account of emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and finally Nero. Mr. Holland is clearly well-versed in this period of Roman history, and not only sets forth the basic facts, but also his observations that are not readily apparent and often overlooked by other historians.

If there was one book you want to read covering this period, this is it. ( )

Dynasty is the early history of the Julio-Claudian line of the Roman emperors retold as a story. This book starts off where Rubicon ended. This is a narrative history that seeks to entertain the reader and provide a story of what happened. For me, it did not succeed with either endeavour. I don’t know much more about the “what happened” than I had before reading this book (i.e. a succession of Roman Emperors that waged war on whom ever stuck their fancy and had a fancy for despotism and murdering anyone they felt like). Nor was I entertained – I was bored and finished reading the book just to get it off my bedside table.

Holland does not attempt to put forth new scholarly conclusions, nor does he offer much analyses of complex events. This narrative relies almost exclusively on textual evidence in Roman literature and history, with casually inserted quotes from primary textual sources without bothering to explain their source, context or (on occasion) their relevance.

The potential storyline is strong, but Holland’s delivery manages to be weak. The writing is tedious, ponderous, overly-flowery with a disjointed and distant narrative that manages to be more selective gossip and sensationalism than actual history. It doesn’t help that in a 500 page book there are only 7 incredibly long-winded chapters, which all have mafia related headings. The author spends a ridiculous amount of ink on each emperor’s sexual proclivities and random insertions of far too much graphic sexual detail of what the author professes to be the values of the rest of the Roman citizens at the time. He rather gleefully “spices” up the narrative of these salacious details with foul and vulgar language (apparently big boys like their potty humour too), which jarred with the tone of the rest of the text. Apparently, Holland is under the impression that popular history books need to be excessively graphic, crude and vulgar to be interesting to readers.

The book is also rather limited in scope, dealing only with the Julio-Claudians and their enemies (i.e. upper-class associates and relatives), thus excluding almost entirely the everyday lives of ordinary Romans, any changes in the Roman economy, trade, and climate, and also excludes anything related to material culture unless it involves monuments relevant to the Julio-Claudians.

This book couldn’t decide whether it was supposed to be a popular history book (with footnotes and bibliography) or a work of historical fiction. Despite the inclusion of a timeline, maps and family trees, this book came across as a messy hodgepodge of people with vaguely similar names (apparently ancient Romans lacked imagination when naming their children!), who are in some way related to each other, doing various despicable deeds to each other. Talk about a dysfunctional, psychopathic family!
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The Rome Imperium: What Julius Caesar instigated, Augustus (and Agrippa) built, Tiberius remotely controlled, Caligula played in, Claudius buttressed and Nero fiddled and fired.

Tom Holland does not attempt to retell history - there are plenty of other books that do that (even though that facts are a bit thin on the ground in many cases); it's his take on the individuals who played the leading role in this ancient superpower. ( )