Palatine: An Alternative History of the Caesars

A unique and entertaining history of the Roman Empire’s first dynasty

14 CE: The first Roman emperor is dead. A second is about to succeed. The Forum of Rome, once fought over so fiercely, has become hardly more than a museum. The house of all power is up above on the Palatine Hill, about to become the birthplace of Western bureaucracy, a warren of banqueting and bedrooms, a treacherous household where it takes special talents to survive.

This is a history of ancient Rome’s first imperial dynasty -- the Julio-Claudians -- with a cast of new men and newly dominant women, those reviled too often in the past as flatterers and gluttons, audacious slaves and former slaves, lawyers-for-hire, chancer arrivistes, and unhinged party animals. Palatine uncovers the lives of the Vitellii, perhaps Rome’s least admired imperial clan, of Publius, an old-fashioned soldier snared in the politics of the new age, of Lucius, an exceptionally skilled and sycophantic courtier, and of Aulus a genial sluggard whose prowess at the table carries him all the way to the throne before collapsing his family’s reputation forever. Few now remember them. Yet in their creeping ascent to the very summit of the imperial hierarchy lie neglected truths about a lasting legacy of Rome.

Peter Stothard is an author, journalist, and critic. He is a former editor of The Times [of London] and of The Times Literary Supplement. His previous books include The LastAssassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar, Alexandria: The Last Nights of Cleopatra, and On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy.