Dynasty
I haven’t read Tom Holland’s Rubicon, but I also know the civil wars period better than the Julio-Claudians (I have to admit that the BBC production of I, Claudius is still the bedrock of my knowledge of the period).
This is still very much popular history, but it’s a very good one. Holland spends one hefty chapter detailing the rise of Rome, up through the assassination of Julius Caesar, with the next going into the Second Triumverate though Octavian being awarded the title “Augustus”, and the third the rest of Augustus’ career. The second half of the book is a second part, with four chapters roughly for the rest of the dynasty (that’s Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero if you’re not quite up on your emperors).
Of course, there is much more here. The entire period is of power politics of the most personal kind. So, Holland does his best to introduce us to all the significant pieces, and trace them through to their various ends, often bloody.
There are also excursions to events away from Rome; we get a very good treatment of the Teutoburg Pass (and he thankfully give a footnote on the fact that Tacitus uses the word ‘saltus’, which can be ‘forest’ or ‘pass’, and the latter has been shown a correct by archaeology). And there’s a lot about how the Romans saw the world, virtue, and mores. All of which is needed to understand these figures.
There’s not a lot of hard detail, and away from the central player’s concerns, a lot is left out. But, this is history just about as thrilling as Robert Graves’ novels.
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