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Lädt ... The Twelve Caesars: The Dramatic Lives of the Emperors of Romevon Matthew Dennison
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. Joy's review: Actually, this may wind up sounding more like a rant than a review. This book is dreadful! Dennison cannot put together even a slightly coherent narrative and includes completely irrelevant things- for example, describing a painting of Claudius from the 1600's- for no discernible reason. He loves using long and obscure words, but them uses them in inappropriate contexts; he does not describe or define important terms like the meaning and levels of the various titles and offices of the Caesars. It's quite beyond me why this book was published. I made it through Nero (6 of the 12 Caesars) and managed to only learn one fact: that "Caligula" is a nickname meaning "Little Boots". A mash-up of undifferentiated rumors, facts, fiction that is almost completely unintelligible. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
An unforgettable depiction of the Roman empire at the height of its power and reach, and an elegantly sensational retelling of the lives and times of the twelve Caesars One of the them was a military genius, one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned, another earned the nickname "sphincter artist". Six of their number were assassinated, two committed suicide--and five of them were elevated to the status of gods. They have come down to posterity as the "twelve Caesars"--Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Under their rule, from 49 BC to AD 96, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years. Matthew Dennison offers a beautifully crafted sequence of colorful biographies of each emperor, triumphantly evoking the luxury, license, brutality, and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith. But as well as vividly recreating the lives, loves, and vices of this motley group of despots, psychopaths and perverts, he paints a portrait of an era of political and social revolution, of the bloody overthrow of a proud, five-hundred-year-old political system and its replacement by a dictatorship which, against all the odds, succeeded more convincingly than oligarchic democracy in governing a vast international landmass. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)937.060922History and Geography Ancient World Italian Peninsula to 476 and adjacent territories to 476 Italian Peninsula to 476 and adjacent territories to 476 Empire 31 B.C.-476 A.D.Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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Dennison writes as if he is Tacitus - which he might choose to take as a compliment, but which I do not mean as one. His literary style is verbose to the point of opacacity, and in places even syntax proves elusive amongst all the oh-so-knowing allusion. As for chronology: forget it.
Sample (from early on in chapter 1, on Julius Caesar): 'Compulsively adulterous, subject to the aphrodisiac of power as he resisted submission in every other aspect of his life, he cultivated a legend of personal distinction and vaulting audacity in which none believed more fully than he.' This sort of thing might work in Latin, but English isn't built that way.
If you can be bothered with such prolixity for its own sake, carry on.
I'm off to find something I only have to read once. ( )