Four Emperors

Title: Four Emperors

Author: Dio Cassius

Binding: Hardcover

EAN: 9789025308711

Condition: Good

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Description:
Part of the Baskerville series .

Four Emperors, 24 years of Roman history, for the first time in Dutch translation. The Greek Roman Cassius Dio gives a sharp and fascinating picture of a period in which the emperorship was characterized by abuse of power, decadence and bloodshed.

After an extremely successful administrative career for a 'foreigner', Cassius Dio (c. 163-235) set about writing a history of Rome. His intention was to teach his contemporaries from history, in which he tried, following Thucydides, to present the facts as objectively as possible.
Characteristic is his description of the emperors of Rome. Cassius Dio was a great supporter of the emperorship, but judges individual emperors harshly. Of the four emperors described in this selection, only Claudius can gain his approval. He has less positive things to say about Tiberius, Caligula and especially Nero. Caligula and Nero also gave every reason to do so: one is said to have wanted to appoint his horse as consul, waged war against the sea and made love to his sisters and a brother-in-law, the other murdered his mother and set fire to Rome.
Dio describes the reigns of the four emperors per year, just like Tacitus, sometimes interrupted by a short character sketch. He therefore proceeds differently than Suetonius, who writes biographies of the same emperors in Emperors of Rome. Four Emperors is a welcome addition to this, but also wonderful comparative material.

GH de Vries is a historian with a special interest in the history of the first century AD. He previously translated two works by the Jewish philosopher Philo (Pogrom in Alexandria and Gezantschap naar Caligula, 1999).