Dynasty

The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar

Tom Holland

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English

Little Brown
01 August 2016

Rome was first ruled by kings, then became a republic. But in the end, after conquering the world, the Republic collapsed. Rome was drowned in blood. So terrible were the civil wars that the Roman people finally came to welcome the rule of an autocrat who could give them peace. ' Augustus,' their new master called himself: 'The Divinely Favoured One'.

The lurid glamour of the dynasty founded by Augustus has never faded. No other family can compare for sheer unsettling fascination with its gallery of leading characters. Tiberius, the great general who ended up a bitter recluse, notorious for his perversions; Caligula, the master of cruelty and humiliation who rode his chariot across the sea; Agrippina, the mother of Nero, manoeuvring to bring to power the son who would end up having her murdered; Nero himself, racing in the Olympics, marrying a eunuch, and building a pleasure palace over the fire-gutted centre of his capital.

Now, in the sequel to Rubicon, Tom Holland gives a dazzling portrait of Rome's first imperial dynasty. DYNASTY traces the full astonishing story of its rule of the world: both the brilliance of its allure, and the blood-steeped shadows cast by its crimes. Ranging from the great capital rebuilt in marble by Augustus to the dank and barbarian-haunted forests of Germany, it is populated by a spectacular cast: murderers and metrosexuals, adulterers and druids, scheming grandmothers and reluctant gladiators.

DYNASTY is the portrait of a family that transformed and stupefied Rome.

By: Tom Holland
Imprint: Little Brown
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 196mm, Width: 131mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 455g
ISBN: 9780349123837
ISBN 10: 0349123837
Pages: 544
Publication Date: 01 August 2016
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tom Holland is the author of Rubicon, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2004; Persian Fire, which won the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award 2006; and the highly acclaimed Millennium and In the Shadow of the Sword. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio.

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

A compelling detective story of the highest order, In the Shadow of the Sword is also a dazzlingly colourful journey into the world of late antiquity. Every bit as thrilling a narrative history as Holland's previous works, [it] is also a profoundly important book - Sunday Times on In the Shadow of the Sword Written with flamboyant elegance and energetic intensity, Holland delivers a brilliant tour de force of revisionist scholarship and thrilling storytelling with a bloodspattered cast of swashbuckling tyrants, nymphomaniacal empresses and visionary prophets . . . Unputdownable - The Times on In the Shadow of the Sword