The Twelve Caesars - Softcover

The personalities of the Twelve Caesars of ancient Rome - Julius Caesar and the first eleven Roman emperors who followed him - have profoundly impressed themselves upon the world. They formed the theme of the great Roman biographer Suetonius, who had much to say about their sexual and other aberrations, which have been the subject of countless legends and bizarre fantasies. In this book Michael Grant attempts to penetrate the fog of superstition and rumour that has gathered around these astonishingly powerful men and investigates how they wielded such vast might, how they coped or failed with their task, and considers the effects their intensely demanding public careers had on their private lives. He questions the truth of the many stories which have suggested that the Caesars were consumed by erotic eccentricities, and he asks to what extent we are justified, after a study of the scorching pages of Tacitus, in applying to the Roman Caesars Lord Actor's saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Michael Grant was formerly a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University, the first Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University, Belfast, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Khartoum. He is Doctor of Letters at Cambridge and Honorary Doctor of Letters and Laws at Dublin and Belfast respectively. He has also been President of the Classical Association of England, the Virgil Society and the Royal Numismatic Society, and is a Medallist of the American Numismatic Society.