Augustus

From Revolutionary to Emperor

eBook, 592 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 2014 by Orion.

4 stars (2 reviews)

Caesar Augustus schemed and fought his way to absolute power. He became Rome's first emperor and ruled for forty-four years before dying peacefully in his bed. The system he created would endure for centuries.

Yet, despite his exceptional success, he is a difficult man to pin down, and far less well-known than his great-uncle, Julius Caesar. His story is not always edifying: he murdered his opponents, exiled his daughter when she failed to conform and freely made and broke alliances as he climbed ever higher. However, the peace and stability he fostered were real, and under his rule the empire prospered. Adrian Goldsworthy examines the ancient sources to understand the man and his times.

3 editions

reviewed Augustus by Adrian Goldsworthy

A good take on a bad genre

3 stars

While reading this, I’ve quipped this is a good biography, as biographies go, while reminding me why I can’t stand biographies. I stand by that assessment, but would like to expand on it a bit.

The problem with writing a biography about someone dead for going on two millennia based on close to zero first hand information on that person is structural. There are source critical approaches that, shedding light on how we construct history, can make for an engrossing read without constructing narratives out of thin air; unluckily, none of these have been chosen here. Instead, we have an old style, capital “H” Humanities book: assuming that a smart interpretation of a finite set of materials thoroughly known to specialists, delivered in an authoritative voice, is good enough. For a long time, it actually might have been, but the current chaos embroiling the Humanities makes me suspect that time …

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