Emperor of Rome

Name: Emperor of Rome
Rating: 4.6 (1454 reviews)

by Mary Beard

First published 2023

Amazon

4.6(1,454)

Emperor of Rome examines the rulers of the Roman world from Julius Caesar and Augustus to Severus Alexander, but it is not a sequence of conventional imperial biographies. Mary Beard reconstructs the institutions, households and rituals that surrounded the emperor: the palace and dining room, petitions and correspondence, travel, succession, court favourites, enslaved attendants and the enormous machinery required to make one man appear to govern a vast empire. Familiar rulers emerge within a shared political system rather than as isolated heroes or monsters.

Beard also tests the lurid stories preserved by ancient writers, asking what tales of madness, murder, sexual excess and palace conspiracy reveal about Roman expectations of power. The emperor possessed extraordinary authority, yet depended on soldiers, senators, administrators, family members and carefully managed public images. By shifting attention between ruler and ruled, the book explains both the practical limits of autocracy and the fantasies through which Romans—and later societies—imagined imperial command.

Historical Periods

Julio-Claudian Dynasty27 BCE–68 CE Year of the Four Emperors69 CE Flavian Dynasty69–96 CE Severan Dynasty193–235 CE Nerva–Antonine Dynasty96–192 CE

Genres

Court & Political Fiction

Historical people

Augustus64 BCE–14 Julius Caesar101 BCE–45 BCE Nero37–68 Severus Alexander208–235 Hadrian76–138 Commodus161–192 Marcus Aurelius121–180 Caracalla188–217 Caligula12–41

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