| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable in Many Ways,
By
This review is from: The Twelve Caesars (Hardcover)
With the death of Michael Grant in late 2004, in many ways, a scholarly era came to a close. He died at 89 years of age. He outlived all of his early contemporaries, Syme, Runciman, and Frank Cowell among others. He closed his career as an independent scholar retiring from academia and government service in 1966 to devote himself to full time writing. He stayed active with his last book appearing in the year 2000. His original training was as an academic numismatist which is apparent in this work under consideration. With over fifty books to his credit, he was probably the most productive classicist and historian of the Greco Roman world of the twentieth century. He was an ardent popularizer and enjoyed an immense audience which persists to this day. Michael Grant was one of the few classical historians to win praise from both academics and the interested lay reader.
While a fine communicator, it has been noted by other reviewers that Grant can be a challenging read given his vocabulary usage. More troubling to this reader is the lack of footnotes and end notes only which complicates reading this work. Specifically, because some but not all quotes from ancient authors are unattributed in the text. Even at its publication in 1975, let alone in the year 2006, most readers do not have the background in the Greek and Latin classics to easily identify the authors of these unattributed quotes. Also, a woefully lacking suggested reading list of secondary materials is included. One star is duly deducted for these shortcomings. The book opens with a splendid and extended essay on classical sources, biography, history and things Roman. It alerts the reader to many facts and interpretations that make the subsequent text far more intelligible. This opening coupled with a short but deeply insightful conclusion can be read with immense profit without ever even approaching the body of the work. However, this would be mistake as the twelve short biographies in chronological order provide a fascinating overview of the first hundred odd years of the Roman Empire as viewed from its center and through the personages of its rulers. Therein lies both the strength and weakness of the book. Others have devoted thousands of pages to materials Grant covers in limited and truncated form in a few hundred pages. And within those twelve short biographies, I believe he accomplishes much. By Suetonius's standards, Grant provides us with a sober and coherent explanation of the problems and challenges faced by those emperors. That overwork and fear of assassinations were debilitating to all that ruled long enough is made plain in these pages. The Senatorial nobility would sooner or later tire of any ruler and plot against him. And if overwork and sedition by the nobility in Rome were not enough, by the middle of the period under consideration, the praetorian guard would start installing emperors, and this would be followed by emperors installed by the provincial legions. In spite of the brevity of each portrait, many incisive judgements regarding each of these personalities are rendered convincingly by Grant. I find those judgements valuable to an overall understanding of the formative era of the Roman Empire. Within its limitations, this a marvelous work that can be appreciated by those with a modest knowledge of the Roman world. Equally, there is much of interest here for the well read in this area. A careful consideration of this work will reward the diligent reader with some remarkable insights on early Roman imperial rule.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Out of Print?,
By
This review is from: The Twelve Caesars (Hardcover)
I don't think this book is out of print anymore because I recently bought the hardcover edition (new) at a big chain store. You can get it used as well. Anyway, I finally finished this thing. It took awhile to read because I found myself cross referencing a few of the chapters with Grant's recommended reading list and I ended up reading three other books while I was reading this one. Overall a very good volume and an easy one to read if you are a novice in classical history. Grant has always done a great job with somehow making a complex topic easy to read for the masses. He covers the first twelve emperors adequately, but to get more out of each one you really need to purchase a separate book on each of the emperors. I liked this book because it gave a good overview of each of them and I was intrigued enough about the lives of a few of them to go out and buy an additional book. If you want a good overview of the emperors without much detail then this is a great book, but it lacks depth into the time period for obvious reasons. You could not cover everything in a volume this size. It is a good book to get you started and to find out what aspect of ancient Rome you are interested in.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emperors, Ceasors, Imperators, O My!,
By
This review is from: The Twelve Caesars (Audio Cassette)
Conspiracy, suspicion, power, corruption, poison, conquests, marauders, murders and more murders. Such is the history of Roman Empire. Then again there are copious examples from every nation's history of such dastardly acts to grab power, from Egyptians pharos, to Bourbons, to Indian Moguls, to British royalty. Human nature has changed very little in two thousand years. Now instead of murdering opponents, we vilify them to such an extent that populace loathes and discards them in the garbage bin. Grant discounts Lord Acton's polemical quote "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Later Lord Acton had modified in saying that too much responsibility coupled with intense fear of life corrupts absolutely. It is very hard to imagine for us, normal souls, with two thousand years separation, what would we do if we were given absolute power over everybody and every thing. But would we resort to killing our own mother like Nero, or have sexual relationships with sisters, like Caligula. It is quite possible if Nixon were the Roman Empire and Watergate exploded on the stage, he would not have hesitated in having few senators, congressmen dispatched in due haste. If there are any good emperors, the vote should go to Augustus, starting from nothing, except, Julius Caesar's adopted nephew, to emerge as victor, after defeating all his rivals, one by one including Mark Anthony and his beloved Cleopatra. Vespatian can also be called a hero to come up the ranks from an ordinary family to start a dynasty and consolidate Rome after bitter civil war. Aggripina the younger stands out among all the women ,( if one can discount Livia, Augustus wife in Graves incomparable "I, Claudius", where he portrays Livia as villai) who is married to aging Claudius, the fourth emperor. She runs the kingdom in his name and manages to bypass Claudius own son and places her son, Nero on the throne. How does Nero reward her? He lets her go out on a faulty boat to drown. What are sons for? Few emperors, imperators were tyrants, megalomanias and sadists and most of them were murdered by conspiracy. Why any body wanted to be one is puzzling as no doubt they all knew the history so well. So Lord Acton is right. It is human nature to lust for Absolute power. The Roman history is fascinating read of human nature, ambition, treachery, power and above all its glory.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
|
|
