Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome (Hardcover)

by Chris Scarre (Author), Christopher Scarre (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
From Augustus to Romulus Augustulus, this colorful album astutely surveys 500 years of contesting and holding the imperial purple. Scarre directs the story along two main routes: the surviving annals of classical historians like Tacitus, Suetonius, or Eusebius, and photographic features of the outstanding buildings put up by the emperors, such as Vespasian's Colosseum. The result is a text winding around many interesting sidebars, maps, and busts of emperors, rendering an effect attractive both to those who know the Roman saga by heart and to those whose ideas of it came from the I, Claudius TV series. The temptation to classify the rulers as good or bad, to which the TV show succumbed, is one Scarre successfully resists by pointing out the senatorial or Christian biases of the contemporary historians. In any event, the job of First Citizen, whether capably or incompetently discharged, came with a high mortality rate, which Scarre delineates, as numerous ignominious endings mark civil wars and dynastic successions. With its accent on visuals and well-paced prose, this tome is well tuned to public library needs. Gilbert Taylor

Review
Use this as a companion for history classes: the reign-by-reign record the rulers of Rome creates a detailed account of the rise and fall of emperors, providing both a historical timeline and biographical portraits of each. A coin portrait accompanies each outline of major events and emperor influences. -- Midwest Book Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson; illustrated edition edition (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500050775
• ISBN-13: 978-0500050774
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #285,640 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on this subject, very well put together, September 2, 2000

By A Customer

I got this book at the library and I was very pleased with its contents. Though I am only in 8th grade, this subject very much interests me but so far I haven't been able to find a book that suits what I want to know. Until now, I am very pleased with this book. It was very well put together and easy to read for even someone of my age. Mr. Scarre did a very good job with this and I hope every one will have the chance to read this.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Things Are Connected, June 16, 1999

By A Customer

This is the best, single history of the Roman emperors that I have come across. It used to seem to me that they were disembodied names, unrelated to events and time. This work puts the emperors in the context of their times and shows how they succeeded one another and how the social fabric of the empire evolved and disintegrated. The portrait busts add a level of humanity to what would otherwise be a dry and dusty name list. But for the grace of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, there go we.....

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for a good read or as a historical reference book, November 1, 2003

By	Jaundiced Eye "jaundicedeye" (Hollywood, California, USA) - See all my reviews

Chris Scarre's Chronicle is a very good overview of the Roman emperors, and helps to place their often confused regnal periods into a proper perspective.

What I found most useful about the book was its chronological grouping of emperors (no more having to look in four different places for four "emperors" who reigned simultaneously -- until one defeated the other or they all fell).

A second useful feature is its thumbnail summary of each "emperor's" birth, death, and regnal periods, his family, and his titles. The titles are often a good guide to the character of the emperors, with stay-at-Rome sybarites with titles such as "Gothicus" and "Germanicus" revealed as vainglorious, while warrior emperors with the same titles are revealed as true veterans prepared to fight for the imperial purple. One helpful feature is an explanation of the significance of the titles. The actual word designating an emperor, for instance, was NOT "Imperator," which was a military honor which could be won by any very succesful general, but "Augustus," with "Caesar" gradually acquiring the meaning of "heir apparent," with many a war fought over who should have which title. (As an interesting historical aside, you may want to note that while "Augustus" eventually became a personal name, "Caesar" became an imperial title in later kingdoms: both "Tsar" and "Kaisar" are actually derived from the name of the last dictator of the Republic, Gaius Julius Caesar, adoptive father of Octavian, who became the first "Augustus" and is usually designated by that title as if it were his proper name.)

The third good feature of the Chronicle is the same as in other books of the series: a plethora of gorgeous photography of things from major architectural wonders to small handcrafts.

The one great inconvenience of the book is the editorial choice of where to place those photos: they too often appear smack in the middle of an imperial biography, or separate the biographies of emperors whose lives should be studied together because of the interlocked details presented by Scarre. This placement was an irritant to me when I tried to just read through the book for pleasure -- the pictures presented jarring interuptions mid-story.

Still and all, one can hardly do better than this for a broad survey of Imperial Rome.