Caesar book 5 summary

His hallmarks were his prolific output and his unwillingness to oversimplify or talk down to his readership Librarian Note There is than one author in the GoodReads database with this name site_link See this thread for information site_link History of Ancient Rome s first twelve Emperors The Twelve CaesarsIf you wish to impress your friends with a knowledge of ancient Rome but only have time to read one book then you won t go too far wrong with Michael Grant. Nonfiction The Twelve caesars palace Very well researched and tightly written Grants wry humour is especially enjoyable It s an academic work but than suitable for the general reader One you can return to again and again English Is it dated Maybe.

The twelve caesars robert graves

Michael Grant was an English classisist numismatist and author of numerous popular books on ancient history His 1956 translation of Tacitus s Annals of Imperial Rome remains a standard of the work He once described himself as one of the very few freelances in the field of ancient history a rare phenomenon As a popularizer his hallmarks were his prolific output and his unwillingness to oversimplify or talk down to his readership Librarian Note There is than one author in the GoodReads database with this name site_link See this thread for information Michael Grant was an English classisist numismatist and author of numerous popular books on ancient history His 1956 translation of Tacitus s Annals of Imperial Rome remains a standard of the work He once described himself as one of the very few freelances in the field of ancient history a rare phenomenon As a popularizer I don t know I m not as up on ancient history as I could be But what I can tell you about this is that Grant writes with insight drawing lines between classical authors like Suetonius Tacitus and Juvenal among others and contemporary scholarship to flesh out the lives of the first dozen Caesars and he does so with a wry sense of humour to boot It s not light reading but it s highly readable even for general audiences and it s compelling I barely put it down Recommended for ancient history buffs or anyone who liked HBO s old Rome series English 4 5Clear overview of the first twelve Roman emperors including Caesar Grant roughly bases his survey on Suetonius s De Vita Caesarum for the bibliographic profiles as well as Tacitus s Annals for historical background He pursues a clear line of comparison for all twelve emperors considering their management of the Senate praetorian guard and management of imperial duties Useful for a brief overview with a clear message but without much ambiguity Good for a first step in the Roman imperial history English I read this in tandem with Suetonius Lives of the Caesars This book uses Suetonius as its primary source but expands the biographies by using other sources and places each Caesar in his historical and sociological context Also it tries to separate out or at least re consider some of the hearsay recorded by Suetonius I think the big take away here was that having absolute power over the known world was an exhausting job and only few Augustus Claudius Vespian did it well English Read this many years ago My current reading of Taylor Caldwell s book on St Luke set during this timeframe has me interested in rereading at least portions of this English This book is a very brief survey of Roman leadership from 49 BC to 96 AD Very brief The text is 260 pages which includes about 30 pages of introduction and conclusion So on average we re at less than 20 pages per Caesar Nobody gets less than about ten which means a single year the Year of the Four Emporers gets as much coverage as Julius or Augustus. The twelve caesars matthew dennison I ve read a fair amount of fiction about Julius and Augustus but knew nothing about any of the rest Except for the cliches that is Nero fiddled while Rome burned Caligula was Caligula I think this book satisfied my curiosity about these guys I might have been happier if the book was twice as long but I knew that it was short before I picked it up Grant relies for the most part on half a dozen sources Suetonius Tacitus Seneca Juvenal Dio The text is reportorial than literary. The twelve caesars sculpture Now I d like to find something good about Trajan Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius English Not as scandelous as a certain BBC production but interesting none the less English Clearly aimed at famous Suetonius s work by the same title Grant s book supplements the former account with many sources from Tacitus and Dio Cassius to modern researchers in Roman History and new findings Even important mere narration of the events is combined with an attempt to analyze and explain them Even for those familiar with the subject there are many discoveries to be made The Author does a great job demonstrating just what a tremendously back breaking duty the job of a Roman Emperor was and how it indeed broke even the strongest of people Time and again we see how without a well executed transition plan a rule of a Caesar ended in a often violent disruption and a crisis only Augustus and Vespasian were lucky enough to grow a fitting successor. The twelve caesars penguin classics Thanks to the Author we are able to see each of the Caesars not as a superficial one dimensional collection of pop history facts Caligula Of course he made his horse a Consul but as complex multi faceted characters Everyone started with the best intentions everyone got broken by the duty sometimes in an ugly way The Author quotes the famous Lord Acton s maxim Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and there is hardly a better book to drive that point home. History The Twelve caesarstone Still it is amazing to witness how the eternal Republic rather quickly transitions into an absolute monarchy while still loudly proclaiming the adherence to the Republican ideals As uncomfortable as it might be there are some lessons for all of us to learn it is indeed a very short way from LIBERTAS POPVLI to LIBERTAS AVGVSTI. The Twelve Caesars kindle reader In nuce what a pleasure Probably the best book on one of the most interesting and important periods of Roman History highly accessible yet deep enough Most importantly the Author undertook a titanic work of combining multiple sources both ancient and new to present a well rounded picture I you plan to read Suetonius I highly recommend reading this one first English 2 Stars Didn t enjoy a majority of the book but finished it for some reason probably stubbornness Audio Book Aside from Julius and a tiny amount about Augustus Caligula and Nero I don t know much about the early Caesars I thought this book would be a good starter book and I guess it is The problem with this book was mostly if not entirely because of the audiobook Although the reader has a great voice I thought she sounded like Judi Dench her voice was mostly the same tempo and cadence Because of this I often found my mind wandering and had to go back and listen to large chunks of it again As far as the content Grant gives an overview of each Caesar s persona but often just skims the political events during their reign To be fair I probably would have retained if I had read the book instead of listening to it Ultimately I was left wanting so this book did inspire me to read about Rome English The book contains brief sketches of Rome s imperial rulers from Julius Caesar through Domitian Two ideas I came away with are that to be successful or at least not killed one had to have the Senate on one s side or at least not P. The twelve caesars folio society d the other was Grant s saying the most successful of the Caesars were capable of hard work I appreciated the sketch of Domitian whom I once thought of as just a nut case he was deeper than that Nero started out decently enough but lost his way Grant doesn t dwell on the persecution of the Christians just a brief mention in passing thereby putting that piece of history and Quo Vadis in perspective English .