Dynasty

Dynasty tells the story of Rome's first dynasty of emperors, from its establishment by Augustus Caesar in the last decades of the 1st century BC to its final, florid extinction less than a century later. The line of autocrats known to historians as the 'Julio-Claudians' remains to this day a byword for depravity. The brilliance of its allure and the blood-steeped shadows cast by its crimes still haunt the public imagination. When people think of imperial Rome, it is the city of Tiberius and Caligula, of Claudius and Nero that is most likely to come into their minds.

In Dynasty, Tom Holland provides not only a compelling history of this fascinating family, but a portrait of the entire Roman world.