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


Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
Title : Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Kindle Edition
Number of Pages : 496
Publication : First published September 3, 2015

Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon—his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic—with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors.
 
Dynasty continues Rubicon's story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman Emperors and it's a colorful story of rule and ruination, running from the rise of Augustus through to the death of Nero. Holland's expansive history also has distinct shades of I Claudius, with five wonderfully vivid (and in three cases, thoroughly depraved) Emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—featured, along with numerous fascinating secondary characters. Intrigue, murder, naked ambition and treachery, greed, gluttony, lust, incest, pageantry, decadence—the tale of these five Caesars continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.


Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar Reviews


  • Jeffrey Keeten


     photo Augustus203_zpsbcjgqzkl.jpg
    Octavian the man. Augustus the God.

    ”When people think of imperial Rome, it is the city of the first Caesars that is most likely to come into their minds. There is no other period of ancient history that can compare for sheer unsettling fascination with its gallery of leading characters. Their lurid glamour has resulted in them becoming the archetypes of feuding and murderous dynasts.”

    The women are schemers, and the men are ruthless. Even Augustus and Claudius, who are considered the more humane and least insane of the Caesars, also wade through the blood of their enemies, those confirmed and those suspected, to maintain their always tenuous hold on power.

    ”Tiberius, grim, paranoid, and with a taste for having his testicles licked by young boys in swimming pools.

    Caligula, lamenting that Roman people did not have a single neck, so that he might cut it through.

    Agrippina, the mother of Nero, scheming to bring to power the son who would end up having her murdered.

    Nero himself, kicking his pregnant wife to death, marrying a eunuch, and raising a pleasure palace over the fire-gutted centre of Rome.”


    ”The first Caesars, more than any comparable dynasty, remain to this day household names. Their celebrity holds.”

    I discovered Tom Holland when I picked up his first book Lord of the Dead, which was a novel about Lord Byron as a vampire. Of course, Lord Byron would make a perfect vampire. I then started hunting down his other horror novels as assiduously as Van Helsing, and in many cases I had to order them from England to be able to read them.

    Then he disappeared.

    Or so I thought.


    Then I discovered his book Rubicon, which ends where this book begins. At first, I thought it must be a different Tom Holland, but after some research, I discovered it was the same man, a horror scrivner remade into a writer of the horrors of history. He doesn’t list his novels in the first few nonfiction works; after all, he has become a serious writer of history and doesn’t want to muddy the waters with claiming those rather lurid novels that I found to be delicious fun. (As I’m writing about them, I’m getting the itch to go read one again.) In this book, listed along with his nonfiction work, are those early horror novels. He must have reached a point in his career where he no longer had to think of those books as orphaned children, written by another man who was lost in the fetid, murky waters of pulp fiction.


     photo Tom20Holland_zpsqlk5kh9b.jpg
    There is a vampire horror novelist still lurking behind those eyes.

    The significance of this for you, dear reader, is that his nonfiction books are written to entertain you. That does not mean they are not serious in nature for it is obvious he has done his research. He has a practiced eye, from writing to fiction, to know what readers want to know. For instance, Augustus saves the empire twice from complete destruction, which is actually fascinating with all the power struggles that the death of Julius Caesar causes. What is equally fascinating is that as Augustus grows older and becomes a God (the wheels might have started to come off the chariot), he becomes more conservative. He imposes those views on a traditionally hedonistic Roman population. The problem is the only child of his loins, Julia, doesn’t get the message, or she feels that being the child of a god that she is beyond reproach.


     photo Julia20the20Elder_zps9nymdguj.jpg
    Julia, one of history's most famous adulterers.

    The stories regarding her infidelities are numerous and legendary, but for me, the following statement attributed to her actually makes me gasp. ”Far from dismissing the rumours of adultery, she dared to mock the censoriousness of those who spread them. How could the stories that she had cheated on Agrippa possibly be true, she was once asked, when Gaius and Lucius look so very like him. ‘Why,’ she answered, ‘because I only ever take on passengers after the cargo-hold has been loaded.’”

    There are plenty of people to scurry back to her father and relate these outrageous statements to him. Whether there is truth in all the allegations that land at her sandals, who can say? She certainly does not quell those rumors, but merely breathes more life into them. The end result is that Julia is exiled to an island by her dictorial father. Ovid, the poet concerned with the artistry of the bedroom, in particular seducing married women, is another thorn in the godly backside of Augustus. He too pushes things too far and is exiled, which is worse than death to a man obsessed with culture.

    It is hard to like Augustus in his later years simply because he becomes more concerned about his own immortality, even more than preserving the few remaining members of his family. His heirs have been dropping like flies, and the rumors of his wife Livia poisoning them to clear the way for her son by her first marriage, Tiberius, are becoming harder to ignore.

     photo Germanicus2020Agrippina20Rubens_zpsa6p3ks5n.jpg
    Germanicus and Agrippina by Rubens, the power couple of the Roman Empire representing all that Rome believed themselves capable of.

    Germanicus and his wife Agrippina are the apple of the eye of the Roman Empire. They are not only a beautiful power couple (bigger than Benniffer or Brangelina), but they are also proving very capable quelling any uprisings across the wide expanse of the reach of Rome. She, unlike most Roman wives, travels with her husband on his military campaign so his successes are more their mutual achievements, and that makes the people of Rome love them even more. When Germanicus dies under rather odd circumstances, that clears the way for Tiberius.

    Tiberius is so stiff necked and puckered assed that he was must have squeaked like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz when he walked. Holland sums him up very well. ”Bloodstained pervert and philosopher-king: it took a man of rare paradox to end up being seen as both.” We focus on his perversions, but he is actually very capable. Before succeeding Augustus, he wins several critical military campaigns. He just is horrible at promoting himself. He feels above it all and winning is just what he is supposed to do. Why should it be a surprise to anyone? He spends a good deal of time on his pleasure island of Capri and basically tells the world to go screw itself. He has a peaceful reign but, like all the Caesars, certainly becomes ruled by rampant paranoia.


     photo 4a444aaf-167b-4b55-808a-1b352f2ef4dd_zpsm2cthx89.png
    Tiberius

    It isn’t paranoia if people are really trying to kill you. The problem with the House of Caesar is that they don’t always target the right people or, in the course of suppressing conspiracies, bring death to such a broad sweep of people, who may or may not have been involved in a conspiracy, that they leave their friends about as equally depleted as their enemies.

    Next in line is the infamous Caligula, who kills just about everyone who could possibly be considered a legitimate heir. He is the son of Germanicus, and any empathy that he was born with must have been burned out of him in the course of watching his family members die one by one. Tiberius’s comment was: ”I am rearing them a viper.”When Caligula is killed by his own Praetorian Guard, well mostly for being a psychopathic asshole, the only real option as his successor is his gibbering fool of an uncle.

    Claudius survives numerous purges of his family by acting like a simple minded, helpless imbecile. The senators that bring him to power probably have it in mind that he will be easy to control.

    He is not.

    He is a student of history and natural science. He is infinitely smarter than anyone could comprehend. Because of his infirmities, he mostly has to travel through the eyes of others. Ambassadors knowing his interest in the arcane bring him specimens from all over the world. (If you have not watched the miniseries I, Claudius starring Derek Jacobi, it is excellent.)


     photo Claudius_zpsz4td1aji.jpg
    Claudius

    When Claudius breathes his last, the empire is left with Claudius’s great nephew Nero. His mother is Agrippina the Younger, daughter of Germanicus. The rumors of imperial incest between mother and son run rampant throughout Rome. Instead of denouncing those rumors, much like Julia, he embraces them. ”It was noted that he kept as one of his concubines a woman who looked exactly like Agrippina. And that whenever he fondled her, or showed off her charms to others, he would declare that he was sleeping with his mother.”

    When Rome burns and Nero is one of the main suspects (after all his main concern is beautifying Rome, and how better to do that than to have a clean canvas to start from), he blames those pesky, noisy, obnoxious Christians. Between 900 and 1000 are killed and murdered (St. Jerome calls them martyrs.) in various creative ways. We don’t know for sure if the Christians had anything to do with the burning of Rome, but given the Sodom and Gomorrah events being sponsored and encouraged by Nero, I can see them convince themselves that burning Rome would be doing God’s work.


     photo Nero20Wikipedia_zpsebk451vd.jpg
    Nero was a cheeky looking bastard.

    Nero believes strongly in applying pageantry to all aspects of his life, including executions. ”Spectacle, illusion, drama: these were the dimensions of rule that truly mattered. Attentive though Nero might be to the grind of business, his true obsession was with a project that he felt to be altogether worthier of his time and talents: to fashion reality anew.”

    Augustus dies in bouts of blood, possibly from a poisoned fig. Tiberius may have been smothered by a pillow. Caligula is hacked to pieces by his own guard. Claudius may have been poisoned, but the wily, old bastard might have just died from old age. Nero commits suicide moments before a sentence of death is to descend upon him. The women don’t fare any better. They are starved to death, exiled, beheaded, run through with swords, and poisoned.

    What a family! Despite their best efforts to destroy themselves they manage to hang onto power from 27BC to 68AD. It isn’t long after their passing, despite the bloody uncertainty of their reigns, that Rome misses them.

    They must have missed the flair, the pageantry, and the insanity.

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  • Bettie

    44BC

    Description: Dynasty continues Rubicon's story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman Emperors and it's a colorful story of rule and ruination, running from the rise of Augustus through to the death of Nero. Holland's expansive history also has distinct shades of I Claudius, with five wonderfully vivid (and in three cases, thoroughly depraved) Emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—featured, along with numerous fascinating secondary characters. Intrigue, murder, naked ambition and treachery, greed, gluttony, lust, incest, pageantry, decadence—the tale of these five Caesars continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.

    Preface Opening: AD40. 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.



    AT THE STARTHaving loved the delicious psychopathic offering from I Claudius, I wonder if Holland's account will show us the characters over the fiction. Many trusted flisters have turned in favourable reviews.

    LATERThere are many ways to say that human history repeats itself, not in the details perhaps, yet the trend is evident, especially when contrasting the Cult of Personality of ancient Rome and today's egotistical monsters - ladies and gentlemen, we have learnt a big, fat Llareggub.

    Ancient death by heavy metal poisoning.

    Tyrant's get the last (and only) decision

    Extreme vetting

    Sex texting ["Give me a thousand kisses" - Catullus]

  • Susan

    Having enjoyed Tom Holland’s excellent, “Rubicon,” I was very happy to have the chance to review this volume.. Subtitled, “The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar,” this follows on from “Rubicon,” which centred around Julius Caesar and his adopted heir, Octavian. The dynasty of Augustus still very defines autocratic power and the celebrity of the Caesar’s remains. Rome’s first imperial dynasty have everything that modern day celebrity desires, and more. It was a time of tyranny, power, sadism and glamour. Holland manages to combine historical accuracy with a readable account of the times.

    In the beginning of this volume, Holland backtracks slightly (so if you have not yet read, “Rubicon,” you can happily read this book and have it make perfect sense), by taking the story up to the assassination of Julius Caesar. The upheaval of Julius Caesar’s murder eventually led to the Imperator Caesar Augustus and then Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. The very names themselves conjour all sorts of images of power and excess. Even though not very familiar with the history of the Caesar’s probably have read snippets about the Caesar’s – Nero who fiddled while Rome burned, Caligula who appointed his horse a consul, how Claudius was discovered cowering behind curtains and given power. Rumours of incest, poison, malicious power, cruelty, the love of a spectacle conspiracy, the show of power and the reality ; sumptuous wealth and disgraced exile…

    Happily for the reader, this time of immense power and excess is wonderfully brought to life; not only through the lives of the Caesar’s, but through their family ties, wives and mothers and others who thankfully left letters and details of how they lived. One such was the poet Ovid, who was seem as immoral during the time of Augustus, when adultery became a public offence, but who looked positively staid by comparison with Caligula. A wonderful read – if you have already enjoyed, “Rubicon,” then you can also be sure that you will love this. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

  • Emma

    'Dynasty' is exceptional. I can say, without reservation, that I have never been so engaged by a history book. Considering I am just finishing my MA in Classical Studies, that's more of a statement that you might imagine.

    The events narrated by Holland are incredible, dramatic, exciting, horrifying. The pages are filled with intrigue and blood. It's safe to say that if these stories were presented as fiction, they would be too outrageous to be believed. In Roman politics, the stakes are as high as they come.

    The book is extremely well written; it balances the historical with the personal. Quotes are given footnotes, so information about sources can be perused at the reader's leisure. Individuals are presented with depth and character, but Holland does not get lost in the internal monologuing to which some historians resort.

    In any case, the fusion of writing style and thrilling subject matter made this book one I could hardly put down. It has piqued my interest in the period and I can't wait to read more. I will definitely be reading others by Tom Holland. I can't recommend it enough.


    Many thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown Group UK for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

  • Trish

    Dec 22, 2015
    For cripes' sake! I have been working on this book for months and only just now realized it was never intended to be a novel, but is meant to be a popular history. Lawsy, I feel stupid. It would have made a difference in how I approached the whole endeavor. In any case, this may be "popular" with historians, but it was rough going for me. Below, see my earlier review, and everywhere you see me calling the work "fiction," have a laugh at my expense. Enjoy!
    ----------------
    Tom Holland’s fiction reads like history. He assigns intent and motive to major characters in the Roman theatre, starting with the appearance of Julius Caesar and going through the family tree to Nero. Soapish in its intrigue, frank in its descriptions of sexual proclivities, and blasé about the heinous criminality of its subjects, this is human history writ large.

    Holland knows his subject with such thoroughness, he can write about the wives and daughters, fathers and sons with a knowledge born of long immersion. The names of the chief actors will sound familiar, e.g., Julius and Julia, Marc Antony and Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Gaius, Agrippa, Caligula, Drusilla, Germanicus, Nero.

    In 60 BC, Julius Caesar was 40 years old. In 44 BC, by a decree of the Senate, he was appointed “Dictator for Life.” A few short weeks later, on the ‘Ides of March,’ he was “struck down beneath a hail of daggers at a meeting of the Senate.” Several in his bloodline would eventually reign supreme in turn, and each would meet a death befitting a dictator, or “Son of a God” as so many of them preferred to be known.

    Holland makes it a lively history, filled with anecdote, sex, violence, and bloody revenge. I listened to the audio of this, mainly so that I could listen to the exquisitely plummy tones of the narrator, Derek Perkins, and because I thought it would help me to get a grasp on what was happening. This novel is undoubtedly best for someone already somewhat familiar with the period since it covers the people and events of over one hundred and thirty years. The paper copy has timelines, family trees, and maps, all of which might aid comprehension if one is prepared to study.

    Honestly, I found it overwhelming and felt it would be better listened to a couple of times. Though labelled a novel, it reads like no fiction I have ever read. No conversation, only imagined motivations: possibly decisions were made by the author about what happened when information was incomplete in the written record. The radical shifts from one train of thought, one character to another, one generation to another often flummoxed me to distraction and left me far behind and struggling to keep up. I never did care much for the trappings of power and gossip bores me terribly. I conclude that unless I was born into the leadership and had to pay attention so as not to lose my life from poison or the knife, I wouldn’t have cared too much about the Caesars then, either.

    I am a poor historian, but I have made a sincere effort to understand, if not enjoy, this period in Rome. What a wretched place it was for those involved in the machinations of the leaders: one never knew where the next blow would fall. Never has that phrase about “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” been more aptly applied than here. Didn't see any immediate relevance of this story to our lives now, I am not sorry to report.

  • Ray

    Caesar managed to climb to the top of the greasy pole that was Rome but he upset a few people on the way up, and got punctured by a lynch mob who stabbed him to death in the Senate in the name of the Roman Republic. His adopted nephew Octavian then seized supreme control after a series of civil wars, ruling as Augustus, first citizen or Princeps of the Roman Empire.

    The descendants of Caesar and Augustus ruled as the Roman Empires first dynasty. Rule and misrule, excess and a marked decline in calibre as the rulers turn over. Dynastic intrigue featuring brutal murder and the surprisingly convenient illnesses of inconvenient rivals together with the inexorable rise of elite military units as the power behind the throne. This latter sowing the seeds for the eventual fall of Rome itself.

    Some fine passages on the excesses of some fairly unsavoury and colourful characters. Holland has a way of bringing ancient history to life, with the occasional proto-tabloid turn of phrase. Erudite and compelling.

    Worth a read


  • K.J. Charles

    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.

  • Kacey Kells

    Having read 'The Twelve Caesars' by Suetonius, I was excited to read John Holland's 'Dynasty' and I wasn't disappointed, quite the contrary. Oh, I won't say it's an easy book to read (I'm a bookworm, but it took me more than a month to reach the last page); nevertheless, Holland is both a brilliant expert and a very good storyteller who knows how to turn real life history into a vivid story, so that it reads like a novel.
    What I liked the most is that Holland clearly tried to remain objective and refused to take a simplistic approach. Indeed, there is no systematic condemnation of the Julio-Claudian emperors, and to my surprise I came to realise that Caligula wasn't exactly the tyrant painted by Suetonius and that Livia (Augustus' wife) was much probably largely responsible for the dramatic fate of the Julio-Claudian dynasy.
    Sometimes, history and real life story are way more fascinating than fiction, and that is particularly true here.
    I can't recommend this book enough!

  • Aleksandar Tasev

    “Remember, I am allowed to do anything to anybody.”
    —Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Caligula)

    Dynasty is not a conventional history book. It’s a philippic. And rightfully so, for the Caesars achieved their glory through murder, tyranny, and sadism. As the Latin poet Claudian has put it, the “stain of the wrongs committed back in ancient times by these men [w]ill never fade from the history books. Until the very end of time, [t]he monstrous deeds of the House of Caesar will stand condemned.”

    Dynasty begins with a short introduction to ancient Rome. Legend has it that Romulus founded the city in 753 B.C.E. and became its first king. Six tyrannous kings later, in 509 B.C.E., an uprising led by Brutus ended the monarchy for good. The Romans swore an oath never again to allow a single man to rule them, and the word king became an insult.

    In 49 B.C.E., Julius Caesar attempted to take over Rome and end democracy. He almost succeeded: after instigating a civil war, he proclaimed himself a dictator for life in 44 B.C.E. However, another Brutus came to rescue and assassinated him with the help of about sixty other conspirators.

    One more civil war followed, this time started by Augustus (Julius Caesar’s adoptive son and founder of the House of Caesar). By wiping out most of his opponents and pretending to support democracy, Augustus managed to take charge of everything and everybody. Even though his military skills were mediocre and his health was poor, he became the first full-fledged autocrat since the regal period. What he excelled at was using others as pawns.

    Augustus was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius. The latter was a distinguished general who found pleasure in forcing Roman nobles to prostitute themselves in public. His carnal desires were not discriminative: little boys and unweaned babies were just as welcome as adults of both sexes.

    And then came the craziest of all Roman emperors: Caligula. He crushed his subjects by showing them time and again that he could and would do whatever he wanted. Whether ordering his soldiers to pick up shells or having a random person torn to pieces, he was forever looking for new forms of entertainment. Before long, he was assassinated by Cassius Chaerea.

    Enter Claudius. It might have been possible to find a less qualified ruler than him, but it would have taken too much time. The Romans were in a hurry, and the sickly Claudius had to do. He married his niece Agrippina, who probably poisoned him.

    The last Caesar was Agrippina’s son Nero. It is unclear whether Nero made a move on his mother first or the other way around. In any case, one of Nero’s concubines looked exactly like Agrippina. Fond of doppelgängers, he also found one of his late wife Poppaea, whom he had kicked to death during her pregnancy. That the new Poppaea was a boy didn’t bother him much: the couple went to Greece and got married. One of them had to be castrated, though.

    Yet, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Seneca had once told Nero that, no matter how many people he put to death, he could never kill his successor. Nero decided to try nonetheless and eliminated all his male relatives. He also had Agrippina murdered and celebrated this feat in games that were “the greatest ever.” In 68 C.E., he was proclaimed a public enemy and killed himself.

    But did all this really happen? Probably, although we will never know for sure. As the Roman historian Tacitus remarked almost 2,000 years ago, the histories of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero “were falsified while they remained alive out of dread, … and then, after their deaths, were composed under the influence of still festering hatreds.”

    Be that as it may, Tom Holland has done an excellent job analyzing sources and suggesting interpretations. His Dynasty offers a gripping, sarcastic narrative focused on personalities rather than events. It shocks, and it disgusts. It informs. It demonstrates “how far unlimited vice can go when combined with unlimited power.” None of the Caesars would have allowed this book. And that makes it worth reading.

  • Kusaimamekirai


    I read Simon Sebag Montefiore’s “The Romanovs” last year and Tom Holland’s “Dynasty” about the five Caesars of the Julio-Claudia dynasty (Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero) and how they each in their own unique way profoundly changed the Roman world is perhaps the most fitting companion to it.
    Just as the Romanovs had extremely competent administrators in charge at various stages such as Catherine the Great, so Rome of the Caesars had men like Augustus and
    Tiberius (this competence of course should perhaps be tempered by the sexual debauchery at court but for the most part all three were instrumental in expanding and maintaining their empires).
    Sadly, as with most dynasties, arrogance eventually sets in and the good of the populace takes an increasingly larger backseat to personal enrichment, corruption, paranoia and slaughter. Just as Russia’S last monarch Nicholas II was playing tennis as Russia disintegrates, Rome’s Nero was leveling cities to build golden palaces to himself.
    Speaking of which, can we talk about Nero for a moment?
    While his uncle Caligula is justifiably seen as a symbol for sexual depravity and just generally being unhinged (sex with reportedly his sister, mother, slaves, men, women, boys to illustrate the former and an awesome story about him dressing up in public with a gold beard and holding a thunderbolt to illustrate the latter), Nero perhaps has him beat.
    Continuing Caligula’s innovation of installing a brothel in the palace, Nero took things to the next level. Witness this story about a young slave boy of his that occurred soon after Nero had accidentally killed his pregnant wife by kicking her in the stomach:

    Just as Nero had once delighted in sleeping with a whore who looked like his mother, he had ordered a hunt to be made for a doppelganger of the wife he had kicked to death. Sure enough, a woman with a close resemblance to Poppaea had been located, and delivered to his bed; but he had soon wearied of her. Then someone else had been tracked down: someone soft-skinned, amber-haired, irresistible.
    To Nero, brought this prize, it was as though his dead wife had been restored to him. So completely did he imagine himself to be gazing on her face again, caressing her cheeks and taking her in his arms, that Poppaea seemed to him redeemed from the grave. Nevertheless, there was a twist. For all the eeriness of the resemblance, it was not a woman who had been found for Nero, nor even a girl. The lookalike, so perfect as to convince a grieving husband, was not perfect in every detail. The double of Poppaea Sabina, Nero’s greatest love, was a boy.
    Nero, though, as was his invariable habit, had gone just that little bit further in scandalising respectable opinion. Yes, Sporus (meaning ‘spunk’ ewww…) had been gelded to ensure the preservation of his beauty, but that was not the only reason for castrating him. It was not a eunuch that Nero was interested in taking to bed, after all, but his dead wife. He wanted Poppaea Sabina back. And so that was the name given to her double. As his instructress in becoming an Augusta, Sporus was assigned a woman of high rank named Calvia Crispinilla, whose qualifications as a wardrobe mistress could hardly have been bettered. Modish and aristocratic, she had also won herself a notorious reputation as Nero’s instructress in sexual pleasures. Delivered into Calvia’s hands, Sporus was duly arrayed in Poppaea’s robes, his hair teased into her favoured style and his face painted with her distinctive range of cosmetics. Everything he did, he had to do it as a woman and a wife of Caesar’s at that.


    Seriously man? That is some fucked up shit. Of course Nero wanting to impregnate his “wife” had explored how to remove Sporous’s mangled genitalia and cut a slit in his groin so that he could….
    I needed a long shower after that little nugget.
    While Nero and Caligula were probably the most excessive of the Caesars, probably unsurprisingly also being the last two , Rome was awash in depravity, incest, murder and pretty much whatever else you can imagine. It was not however, in a civil war. Holland makes the salient point of the book I believe when he writes that the Romans, particularly when Augustus in all but name had put an end to the Republic, had suffered years of bloody and traumatic civil war. Yes, the people surrendered some basic liberties. Yes, the people often lived in squalid conditions and were unable to have a voice in their government. But what they lost in liberty, they gained in security. It is difficult to underestimate how after years of bloodshed, stability at any price was welcome. And that is what the Romans until the fall of Nero indeed received. The battles on the borders of the empire rarely troubled everyday citizens and increasingly elaborate games and gladiatorial contests kept people entertained and their minds off what they had lost.
    As the prominent intellectual Seneca wrote during the reign of Nero:

    "Nothing is better able to brainwash and enslave us than the dazzle of spectacle."

    While modern historians, rightly or wrongly, like to compare the decline of Rome to modern day empires such the United States, there are certainly disturbing parallels and warnings. Not the least of which is the sense of spectacle Seneca references. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and other social media insures we are always preoccupied while an increasingly bellicose and sensationalistic media amplifies “stories” in a frenzy until a fresh outrage arrives.
    In many ways we are not Rome. In our obsession with sex and distraction however, the similarities are both stark and sobering.

  • Palmyrah

    I bought this book after hearing it plugged by the author in a lecture at the Galle Literary Festival earlier this year. Mr Holland’s pitch was that Suetonius, Tacitus and the rest were relying on earlier accounts, now lost to us, by authors contemporary with the Caesars or with their near successors and that these accounts were inevitably biased, distorted and/or confabulated in order to support contemporary political agendas, flatter powerful individuals, etc. Thus, he said, they must be treated with great suspicion, and assessed for veracity and meaning based on what we can find out about their historical context.

    In such an alternate reading, Caligula emerges less as a blood-soaked lunatic than as a populist with a sense of humour who ingratiated himself with the Roman people by humiliating the senatorial class in various imaginative, filthy and sometimes deadly ways; Messalina may not have been a traitorous nymphomaniac but instead the victim of a palace coup by Claudius’s powerful slave and advisor Narcissus; and the great Augustus himself is seen as nothing but a successful terrorist and strongman upholding a pretend Republic while busily engaged, behind the scenes, in destroying the real thing

    I was sold, and bought the book. Having read it, I can confirm that it lives up to its author’s sales pitch. The sections on the Republic, Augustus and Caligula are the best; the one on Tiberius I found not very interesting, perhaps because Tiberius himself was not a very interesting character. Be that as it may, I strongly recommend Dynasty for its refreshingly different and unsentimental view of history’s most famous family.

  • The Library Lady

    Like so many adult historians, Holland's writing is often ponderous and you begin to drown trying to keep all the information straight.
    The only time he brightens up is when he gets to talk about sex, and then with the glee of an adolescent boy he goes into detailed musings, often using graphic language that doesn't shock me, but doesn't match the fairly scholarly tone of the rest of the text. It's unpleasant and downright salacious.

    I didn't read "Rubicon," (and wish I had know that it existed before reading this, because it would have explained the abruptness of the opening chapters,) but I don't plan to now. Instead I'll await my turn to read
    SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by
    Mary Beard, who writes readable, accessible history and can write about human sexuality in terms of the period with frankness and maturity.

  • Mark Jr.

    Holland is an excellent writer and, quite apparently, a master of his subject matter. This praise feels hackneyed, but I can still think of none better: he makes the Caesars come alive.

    He also helps support the thesis of his later book, Dominion, by showing how very different a culture’s sexual morality can be. Rome had its (God-given, Paul said in a letter to early Roman Christians [Rom 2:14–15]) moral conscience, its taboos. But it took Christianity to bring us a world in which a #MeToo movement could happen. Christians don’t always live up to their own standards of morality, but those standards are clear—and clearly different from those of the ancient Romans.

  • Christine

    3.5

    Sometimes I wish I Claudius was true, but then if it was, we wouldn't have nicely detailed books like this.

    I highly recommend, you already have a general outline of the time because at points Holland jumps around a bit. I liked that, however, because it shows the relationships between different policies.

  • raffaela

    I've been reading a lot about Rome this year, but most of the books I've read so far have to do with the Republic. Dynasty gave me a glimpse into what Rome was like after the Republic fell and the emperors reigned supreme. Holland only covers the first five Julio-Claudian emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero), but that's a good thing - it makes the narrative much more manageable to read through (especially if you're a beginning reader on this topic like me) and allows Holland to really be able to paint portraits of these five men and the times they lived in. (As a warning, Rome during this period could be quite violent and debauched, and the book includes some of that - so it's not for younger readers). Despite that, I found this an interesting read and I hope Holland writes more about other Roman emperors someday.

    It's so ironic that even as emperors were claiming to be gods, the real Son of God was walking around on earth in a Roman province. And the Roman emperors would never have dreamed about this small and weird cult called Christianity taking over their invincible Empire, but it did! And it has proved far more long-living than even ancient Rome. That's the power of the King of kings (and emperors).

  • Liviu

    the usual story (with a few tweaks, more below) in the engaging style of the author of Rubicon (one of the best popular history books of all times alongside JJ Norwich Byzantium), but my ultra high expectations were not quite met as the book seems to go by fixed # pages per year, so the times of Augustus and Tiberius which cover about 80 of the 110 ten years of the dynasty (43 BC and the Triumvirate, though the book goes in the background of the story covered in Rubicon for a few pages in the beginning - 68 AD and Nero's fall) get most pages, but Claudius and Nero are really shortchanged, almost like: enough pages, it's time to wrap it up, so let's do a fast sketch - the short reign of Caligula actually is covered in more detail than the following two

    - the main tweaks from the usual narrative come from an aristocratic republican point of view, so Augustus is generally the terrorist (descendant of the rope maker who crushed the aristocracy by any and all means) and Tiberius the high noble (descendant of Appius Claudius of legend and Claudius Nero the winner of Metaurus which essentially ended Hannibal's chances in Italy) who assumed the reign because he had to as the Senate was not capable of governing anymore after the very long Augustan age

    - overall, superb narrative and a good accounting of the usual story, but lacks the coherence and balance of Rubicon; I Claudius is still the gold standard for the period

  • Richard Thomas

    This is a vivid account of the first five Caesars of the Augustan dynasty. Their lives and achievements are described in detail and the (I suppose) bizarre mixture each displayed to varying extents of solid statecraft with grotesque personal characters. Augustus was recognisably human whose political acumen and genuine regard for the roman people was his strength. His feet had less clay than his four successors. Tom Holland describes the strengths and weaknesses of the four next Caesars with a cold and clear eye. He recognises their intelligence and their grasp of how to manage the people. He also graphically describes their weaknesses. All save Augustus and perhaps Claudius could be fairly called monsters by our expectations of how rulers might comport themselves but this is what makes the history of the times so fascinating.

  • Travis

    I literally waited years for this book to arrive in print. And when I discovered it online one afternoon, I was elated. Tom Holland is my favourite chronicler of history, there is nobody better, especially when it comes to Ancient Rome. Holland's wit, and fluid prose are a treat to read. In "Dynasty", Holland continued the story after Julius Caesar's death and covers the legendary Julio-Claudian line that began with the majestic Augustus, continued with the tormented Tiberias, was passed down to the depraved Caligula, then was suddenly handed to the unlikely, but successful Claudius, and then ended with the lunatic Nero.
    To sum it all up -- this book was like dining at a top French restaurant, I savoured every word, and every sentence. "Dynasty" was truly delicious. A masterpiece. Bravo, Tom Holland !

  • Doubleday  Books

    With the flare of a seasoned storyteller and the expertise of a practiced historian, Tom Holland brings the reign of the first five Roman emperors to life. Dynasty picks up where Holland’s popular Rubicon left off: with the murder of Julius Caesar. I’ve never been one to dip too deeply into history, but the exciting and riveting details Tom Holland brings to life in Dynasty left me unable to tear myself away. This book is awesome for readers looking for both a thrilling plot and a history lesson along the way—impress your friends with your newfound knowledge of Roman history, without having to trudge through a dry history textbook! What’s not to love?
    -
    Sarah E., Doubleday Marketing Department

  • Nick

    The history is fascinating but Tom Holland's writing style is an acquired taste. I found the florid prose and the sarcastic tone a bit of a chore to read, along with his implausible capacity to know the innermost thoughts and feelings of people two thousand years dead.

    Holland is almost exclusively interested in the lurid, the sensational, the titillating. Of course, reading about sex and violence in ancient times can be fun, but if your interests are in more mundane subjects, like the economy, administration of an empire, even military affairs, then perhaps look elsewhere.

  • Carey

    Bloody brilliant. Eminently readable and scholarly - what more could you ask for!

  • Elizabeth S

    4.5 very well earned stars

    The only reason this book doesn't have 5 stars is because I already knew most of the history going into it, so I wasn't phenomenally shocked by anything. For that reason, it seems a bit of an exaggeration to consider it amazing. Nonetheless, this is an excellently researched and written book.

    Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar is my first Tom Holland book, but by no means his only strong work. I've heard great things about his books before, and as someone who greatly enjoys Roman history but hasn't studied it at great length, I thought this would be a good read. Fortunately, I was correct!

    Holland demonstrates a fantastic dedication to his research, leaving no detail unexamined. Yet at the same time, he easily avoids the all too alluring trap of turning his history into something dull and jam-packed with egregious facts.

    For that reason, I think Dynasty can appeal to the audiences who already know and enjoy learning about the Caesars, as well as those with little to know knowledge on the matter.

    It goes without saying that the entire family - both blood and honorarily related - is one of great fascination. Julius Caesar undoubtedly gets the most attention (albeit largely for his famous assassination), but I would argue he's hardly the most interesting or fun to examine.

    Here, Holland spends a good chunk of time on Augustus, and I believe rightfully so. It was more he than anyone else who laid the groundwork for the Caesar legacy - god-like, and more and more obsessed with how the fantastical fits into reality as each generation progressed.

    Dynasty definitely reads like a history book and not a novel, but a compelling one at that. Minutiae you may otherwise dismiss, like an emperor's acne problems, somehow manages to tie into the bigger picture thanks to the clever hand of Holland.

    Overall, that was probably my favorite part of this work. While I enjoyed recounting the large points of the Caesars, I found myself understanding the history better than ever before because of how everything wove together. Along the way, I picked up plenty of nuances and subtle thoughts I never would've expected to encounter in such a book. It made the whole thing more fun, while not dismissing the importance of the main historical implications.

    If you're remotely interested in Roman history or any members of the house of Caesar, you should absolutely check out Dynasty. It's a great read that's both easy to get through and complex in nature, and very much worthwhile.

  • Christopher

    (Reviewer's Note: I just wrote a more in depth review of this book on my weekly book blog. If you like this review and would like to read more, click on the following link:
    https://tobereadnow.blogspot.com/2017...
    )

    I loved Mr. Holland's Rubicon when I read it in high school and I've had my eye on this sequel for some time now. And while not as memorable as his previous book, Mr. Holland does not fail to deliver in this history of the Julio-Claudian line of Roman emperors.

    Starting with a quick recap of the events leading up to the death of Julius Caesar covered in Rubicon, Mr. Holland follows the lives and rules of the Caesars from Augustus through to Nero. Like his previous book, he synthesizes multiple ancient sources into one exciting historical narrative. This is history told by the hand of a well practiced novelist. Mr. holland doesn't mince words either. He talks about violence and sex with a casualness worthy of his Roman subjects. This is definitely not a book for readers younger than high school.

    However, there are some problems with this book. Mr. Holland has a tendency, particularly in the middle chapters, to bounce around the timeline in his narrative. This wouldn't be so bad if the Romans didn't have a nasty habit of naming their kids the same over every generation, particularly the women. Honestly, there are so many Agrippinas and Livias and Drusillas that I doubt anyone can keep their characters straight.

    Still, this is a great book about the first decades of the Roman Empire that I would,highly recommend to anyone interested in the period.

  • Bill

    I don't read much non-fiction history, as I find a lot of it to be very dry and relatively boring. I have read a lot of historical fiction, because as long as the history rings true, I have found historical novels to be much more palatable and easier to read.

    So, I decided to try and rectify the relative lack of real history books being read, and decided to start with this one. And what a good choice it was too. This book is about the various emperors who ruled over the Roman empire after Julius Caesar was murdered (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero). The book flows so well and is so easy to read, that you could be forgiven for thinking it is fiction. But no, it's not. This is real history. And this book has a little bit of everything...patricide, matricide, infanticide, in fact every kind of "cide" you could think of. Then there is nepotism, all over the place. Not to mention incest. There is something happening on pretty well every page. What a wild bunch these Romans were. And yet they had the most amazing civilization as well. Literature, music, theater, you name it they had it. And their architectural achievements were staggering. Some of the aqueducts that they built 2000 years ago are still functioning to this day.

    So yeah, this was a great history book to start with. Now if I can only find a bunch more like it.

  • Jerome Otte

    An accessible, well-researched, and lively history of the dynasty.

    Holland picks up where he left off in Rubicon, but the background should be sufficient for those who haven’t read it. Each chapter will usually cover one of the emperors, his political career, and his military campaigns, along with the general situation in the empire.

    The narrative is, for the most part colorful, engaging and easy to read, if a little dense and long-winded at times. Holland vividly covers the emperors, their decisions, how they impacted the history of the empire, and the context that makes the reigns of people as seemingly insane as Caligula and Nero make sense.

    However, there is little analysis, and sometimes it seems like Holland is more interested in the sensational aspects of these people rather than their impact on the empire. The narrative has a very authoritative tone, as if Holland knows peoples’ motives for certain (always tricky for this era of history) The narrative gets a little rambling at times, and Holland also uses some odd modern terminology (“snack bars,” “fast-food stalls,” etc.) For some reason, when covering Nero, Holland does not cover his execution of Corbulo (and how it made the army Nero’s enemy) He also describes Caligula’s popularity but not his contempt for the people.

    An energetic, compelling, and clearly written work.

  • Sud666

    Superb history book. Well written, engaging and full of interesting information. This is how narrative history ought to be written. A wonderful book tracing the rise and fall of the Julio-Claudinian line of Emperors (starting with Julius Ceasar and ending with Nero) this is a phenomenal story of the Dynasty that helped to shape the Ancient Rome most recognized by people. Starting with Julius Caesar, then Octavian/Augustus Caesar and finishing with Caligula, Cladius and Nero-these 5 members of the Julio-Claudinian family helped to establish the rule of the Emperors (stamping their name into a title-Caesar). Set against the changing mores of the Roman people and the changes in the Rome that led from a Oligarchical Republic to Imperial Rome this is a must read for anyone interested in this period or anyone who just enjoys well written history.

  • Nikola Jankovic

    Nije ovo akademska istorija, daleko od toga. Nema tu fusnota, retko ima zaustavljanja kako bi se posumnjalo u klimave istorijske izvore. Često se stvari uzimaju zdravo-za-gotovo. Holand je spreman da jednostavne citate savremenika predstavi kao istorijske činjenice, da prepriča anegdote kao stvarne događaje, da prećuti izvore, stavi reči (izmisli?) u usta stvarnim ličnostima.

    Ovo ne znači da nije dobro proučio i antičke i moderne izvore, ali osećaj je da je uzeo ponešto iz svakog i napisao priču koja će dobro da zvuči. Ima tu stvari koje bi trebalo da privuku široke mase: prevare, seks, intrige. Istorija za čitaoce u 21. veku? Možda, ali istorija je interesantna i zbog analiza, pogleda na posledice događaja i odluka koji su nam predstavljeni kroz te priče.

    Ako si spreman da Dinastiju čitaš kao priču, onda ta priča jeste interesantna, Holand je dobar pisac. Fokusirani smo na dinastiju koju je osnovao Julije Cezar, pa tako pratimo život prvih pet careva iz julijevsko-klaudijevskog klana: Avgust Oktavije, Tiberije i Kaligule, te na kraju Klaudije i Nero.

    A nije samo priča fascinantna -
    porodično stablo nije daleko od toga. Evo šta kaže
    srpski članak na Vikipediji o njihovim porodičnim odnosima :)

    1) Август је био Цезаров сестрић у другом колену Јулија Цезара (и његов усвојени син).
    2) Калигула је био Тиберијев синовац у другом колену (и његов усвојени син)
    3) Клаудије је био сестрић у другом колену.
    4) Нерон је био Клаудијев сестрић у другом колену (и његов усвојени син))

  • Tudor Ciocarlie

    The real history in this book is much more interesting than the speculations of Robert Graves in I, Claudius.

  • Todd

    Entertaining, although not as good as Rubicon.

    Overall an edifying history of the emperors in the house of Caesar. Bridging from where Rubicon left off with Scipio Africanus, taking us through the Roman Civil Wars, and the rise and fall of the House of Caesar. From the rise of Augustus, the establishment of the Augustinian dynasty, down through the fall of Nero.

    Not surprisingly, the drama has turned from the civil wars at the end of the Roman Republic to the palace intrigue at the beginning of the Empire. Never a buff of court intrigue, I was more gripped by the turning of the screw leading to Caesar's ascent than the internecine backstabbing (pun not intended) by his adopted descendants. Perhaps the history of the next two millennia overplayed those scripts; the plots and murders by Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero laid the script that the European monarchs (and later dictators) followed all too well over a millennium later.

    This book, given its time frame and dynastic subject matter, was more a of chronicle than its predecessor Rubicon. A few chapters dragged on a bit. Others were attention grabbing. Was awaiting the climax like Rubicon, it never came; the rise and fall of the House of Caesar was more of a slow burn.