Dynasty

Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon-his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic-with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors.
Dynasty continues Rubicon's story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman Emperors and it's a colorful story of rule and ruination, running from the rise of Augustus through to the death of Nero. Holland's expansive history also has distinct shades of I Claudius, with five wonderfully vivid (and in three cases, thoroughly depraved) Emperors-Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero-featured, along with numerous fascinating secondary characters. Intrigue, murder, naked ambition and treachery, greed, gluttony, lust, incest, pageantry, decadence-the tale of these five Caesars continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.

Tom Holland is a historian of the ancient world and a translator. His books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, Persian Fire, In the Shadow of the Sword, The Forge of Christendom, and Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Virgil for the BBC. He is a winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to "the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilization of Ancient Greece and Rome." He lives in London with his family.