Emperors and Empires
A Reader's Companion to the Lives of the Caesars
James Coverley · 2023 · 512 pages
Rome had fifty-nine emperors, give or take a few depending on how you count. Some were brilliant. Some were catastrophically incompetent. Most were somewhere in between, muddling through one of the most demanding jobs in human history: running an empire of sixty million people without a telephone.
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This book is a reader's companion to their lives — part biography, part political history, part character study. Each chapter takes one emperor and asks not just what they did, but who they were: what shaped them, what they feared, what they got wrong, and occasionally what they got right.
Designed to be read in any order, it is as much a book about power and its effects on human beings as it is about Rome specifically.
Available formats
The Cych Press