The Twelve Caesars

Unputdownable... These histories from 2,000 years ago are riveting in their insight, their black humour and their sheer readability, give or take a few highbrow verbal flourishes. Matthew Dennison fleshes out their gaudy history with boisterous scholarship. Daily Mail An unforgettable depiction of the Roman empire at the height of its power and reach, and an elegantly sensational retelling of the lives and times of the 'twelve Caesars'.

An unforgettable depiction of the Roman empire at the height of its power and an elegantly sensational retelling of the lives and times of the 'twelve Caesars'.

One of them was a military genius; one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned. Six of their number were assassinated, two committed suicide, and five of them were elevated to the status of gods. They have come to be known as the 'twelve Caesars' - Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. Under their rule, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years.

In The Twelve Caesars, Matthew Dennison offers a beautifully crafted sequence of imperial portraits, triumphantly evoking the luxury, licence, brutality and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith.