Not Built in a Day

 Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire-Emma Southon

Simon & Schuster

Release Date: June 30, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman Rome could not function without slavery as it underpinned every single part of their economy. Without the millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment, or born into it as “home bred slaves”, the Roman empire’s great aqueducts and temples could never have been built. There would be no coins or tiles to find in fields, no limitless manpower for the army and navy that conquered the Mediterranean, no marble palaces or underfloor heating, and certainly no life of unimaginable luxury for the one percent who didn’t even tie their own shoes. For the first time, Not Built in a Day tells their stories.

Not Built in a Day takes readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses; from the guards who kept the streets of Rome safe and the mines which kept Rome a city of gold and marble, to the builders who placed every brick in the Colosseum. It traces how people entered, experienced, and left slavery, covering the little known story of slave revolts and the complex realities of enslaved people who themselves owned enslaved people. Not Built in a Dayalso explores the lives of those freed from slavery, finally able to choose their own destinies.

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I'm a huge fan of historian Emma Southon. She's on my short list of must-buy historians when she has a new book coming out. She questions sources, she gets into the cracks of what archaeology and literature and laws have left us and works out what life would have been like for those who have been left out of so many re-tellings of history with a big H: women (A Rome of One's Own), and in Not Build in a Day, the enslaved population of the Roman Empire. And she does it all with a delightful snarky, irreverent sense of humor. 

As horrifying as Roman slavery was, the layers of complexity thanks to frankly weird laws that meant the empire literally could not survive without a massive enslaved population were fascinting. I had no idea about some of the financial and legal hoops Romans built for themselves. While I knew this was a civilization that was focused on status, I'm not sure I had absorbed just what that meant about daily life: your status had status and could change depending on so many things. This included people in slavery. Enslaved people, freed people and citizens, all had so many levels of status depending on who was involved with what that it must have been exhausting. 

The book breaks down into where people are enslaved (the imperial house, the city, the country, etc.) and the kind of work they are required to do, because that has massive impacts on the experience of the individual.

I can't tell you how much I think this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Roman history. Read it along side all the other histories that look at the big pictures and the big names and forget to tell you about what a Roman's daily life was like. Because this, this was daily life in Rome. You were on one side of the whip or the other, but every single person experienced this in some form every day. 

Wonderfully researched, well written, another triumph for Emma Southon. I can't wait to see where she takes us next. 

Carthage

 Carthage: A New History- Eve McDonald

W.W. Norton & Co.

Rating: 📚📚📚

Release Date: January 13, 2026

Synopsis: Carthage was a power that dominated the western Mediterranean for almost six centuries before its fall to Rome. The history of the realm and its Carthaginians was subsumed by their conquerors and, along the way, the story of the real Carthage was lost. An ancient North African kingdom, Carthage was the home of Hannibal and of Dido, of war elephants and enormous power and wealth, of great beauty and total destruction.

In this landmark new history, Eve MacDonald tells the essential story of the lost culture of Carthage and of its forgotten people, using brand new archaeological analysis to uncover the history behind the legend. A journey that takes us the Phoenician Levant of the early Iron Age to the Atlantic and all along the coast of Africa, Carthage puts the city and the story of North Africa once again at the centre of Mediterranean history. Reclaimed from the Romans, this is the Carthaginian version of the tale, revealing to us that, without Carthage, there would be no Rome.

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(3.5 stars)

When history is written by the winners, it can mean the losers are all but erased- and that is what happened with Carthage. Anything anyone today knows about the city comes to us from Roman eyes. So this book, trying to find the Carthage that isn't told to us through Roman propaganda, is a fascinating and much needed book for the history shelves.

From the city's founding as a Phoenecian outpost to its destruction by Rome hundreds of years later, Eve McDonald takes readers through the development of a city, a people, and a mega-power whose existence rivaled (and threatened) Rome's desire to dominate the Mediterranean. She critically examines both ancient sources and modern archaeological discoveries to evaluate how different events, trade, sieges, and the wars with Rome would have effected the Carthaginians. I found her explaination of the changes in the power structures across the Mediterranean over time, and how Alexander the Great essentially changed the game for everyone, quite interesting.

The chapters on the Punic Wars were, for me, the clearest and best written. Maybe because there's the most evidence in the historical sources for her to work with. McDonald is never afraid to admit when there is simply not enough information for scholars to do more than some educated guesswork on something, which I admire. By the end of the book I was pretty solidly on Carthage's side and wishing more reasonable treatied could have worked- but apparently that's not what was going on in this time.

An excellent, well-written, well-researched book for anyone who is interested in getting the story Carthage wishes it could have told us. A must-read for ancient history enthusiasts.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Divine Might

 

Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth- Natalie Haynes

Harper Collins

Release Date: January 2, 2024

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar.

Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin: Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s brow (giving Zeus a killer headache in the process), the goddess of war and provider of wise counsel. Aphrodite, born of the foam (and sperm released from a Titan’s castrated testicles), the most beautiful of all the Olympian goddesses, the epitome of love who dispenses desire and inspires longing—yet harbors a fearsome vengeful side, doling out brutal punishments to those who displease her. Hera, Zeus’s long-suffering wife, whose jealousy born of his repeated dalliances with mortals, nymphs, and other goddesses, leads her to wreak elaborate and often painful revenge on those she believes have wronged her. (Well, wouldn’t you?) Demeter, goddess of the harvest and mother of Persephone; Artemis, the hunter and goddess of wild spaces; the Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory; and Hestia, goddess of domesticity and sacrificial fire. Infused with Haynes’s engaging charm and irrepressible wit, Divine Might is a refreshing take on the legends and stories we thought we knew.

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If you've read Natalie Haynes' Pandora's Jar (and you really should!), you have an idea of how Divine Might is set up: Haynes looks at the myths of several Greek goddesses and analyzes them both through the lens of ancient Greece (what were the men really saying in the story versus what we think of today as the story) and then putting a more female-centered view on things. After all, Greece back in the day was a man's world. So how did a goddess use her power and how did women celebrate this?

Haynes applies her impressive knowledge of ancient history and ancient Greek along with her delightful (modern) sense of humor to answer these questions and bring the goddesses into a frame we can understand and be inspired by. From the Homeric Hymns to the Iliad and Odyssey to the poems and plays we know and those we only have fragments of, Haynes does an amazing job of finding the goddesses who aren't always obviously celebrated alongside those who are.  The Furies and the Muses get equal time with Athene and Aphrodite, and Haynes' look at Hera was definitely thought-provoking and changed how I looked at many of her aspects.

 I think two of my favorite chapters (if I had to choose, because they were all great!) were the ones on Demeter and Hestia. Haynes really goes deep into Demeter and her different aspects and does a great job reminding us how, for all we normally think of her as a kindly, mothering figure, she has her power and rage just like the other goddesses. It isn't good to underestimate Demeter, or any woman/mother! Hestia's chapter may be my favorite of all though. Partly because, as Haynes admits up front, there isn't much in the archaeology for Hestia- no grand temples like for Athene- and no long poems like for Demeter. For Hestia, it is in some of the small details we discover her, as well as in the laws Rome developed for Hestia's Roman version, Vesta, and her sacred priestesses the Vestal Virgins. She became one of the most fascinating goddesses to me through Haynes' searching and discoveries. 

Divine Might is a book for anyone interested in Greek mythology and ancient Greek history, anyone who is enjoying the recent retellings of myths and wants to look into some of the goddesses as women would see them, and anyone who enjoyed Pandora's Jar.  I know I'll be rereading both books plenty of times for their thought-provoking conversation and for their humor. Something for everyone!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

A Rome of One's Own

 

A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Romane Empire- Emma Southon 

Abrams Press

Release Date: November 7, 2023

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “The Doing of Important Things,” and as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through “the political stab-fest of the late Republic,” and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

 
Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One’s Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.

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Emma Southon is my absolute favorite historian when it comes to exploring ancient Rome. First off, she literally wrote a book on murder in Rome (A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and I feel like that is a book everyone needs in their life.  I know I did. Secondly, she examines Roman history a)within its historical context b)looking at the historical sources in their context and c)with a dry wit and humor that makes me feel like I'm having a conversation with a friend about something that I would actually regularly talk to a friend about (because that's the kind of person I am). It's also the sort of humor that would make people not necessarily interested in ancient history really get into it. And have I mentioned that she doesn't look at what Traditional Historians usually look at: Important Battles In History? 

Instead, Emma Southon has been on the cutting edge of examining ancient Roman history from the point of view of women since her fabulous book on Agrippina came out in 2019 and she hasn't looked back since. In A Rome of One's Own she builds on Agrippina's success by exploring the lives of 21 Roman women who historians both past and present have relegated to footnotes (if they get mentioned at all) and reframe the story to remind us that really, it's the women who are incredibly important in the story of Rome. Even the Romans knew that, little though some of them liked to admit it. 

A Rome of One's Own spans the entire length and timeline of the Roman Empire, from the early women of Rome (Tarpeia and Hersilia- you probably never heard of them) to one of the most famous (Lucretia- Roman men loved to turn her into a literary trope and make it all about them). From Boudicca (you might have heard of her, here's as close to the real story as Southon can get) to Julia Felix (a Pompeii businesswoman you've never heard of, but she'll make you question what you think you know about Romane women) and into the strange world of Christian martyrdom (Perpetua, in her own words) and the end of the Roman Empire, when Christians ruled and everyone was still fighting (Galla Placidia). Some of these women ruled behind the scenes, or not so behind the scenes, some just wanted to run a business and stay away from the murder-happy aristocrats. But Southon gives us compelling arguments that their stories, and the thousands like them that are not told here, are more the "real" Roman Empire than all of the Important Things and Battles we read so much about. Here are the true people of Rome, the lives both small and large, overlooked and misunderstood, and completely fascinating to read.

Full of fascinating facts and delightful humor, A Rome of One's Own is one of those books everyone should read!

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

Egypt's Golden Couple

Egypt's Golden Couple: How Akhenaten and Nefertiti Became Gods on Earth- John Darnell & Colleen Darnell

MacMillan

Release Date: November 1, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚

Synopsis: Akhenaten has been the subject of radically different, even contradictory, biographies. The king has achieved fame as the world's first individual and the first monotheist, but others have seen him as an incestuous tyrant who nearly ruined the kingdom he ruled. The gold funerary mask of his son Tutankhamun and the painted bust of his wife Nefertiti are the most recognizable artifacts from all of ancient Egypt. But who are Akhenaten and Nefertiti? And what can we actually say about rulers who lived more than three thousand years ago?

November 2022 marks the centennial of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and although "King Tut" is a household name, his nine-year rule pales in comparison to the revolutionary reign of his parents. Akhenaten and Nefertiti became gods on earth by transforming Egyptian solar worship, innovating in art and urban design, and merging religion and politics in ways never attempted before. 

Combining fascinating scholarship, detective suspense, and adventurous thrills, Egypt's Golden Couple is a journey through excavations, museums, hieroglyphic texts, and stunning artifacts. From clue to clue, renowned Egyptologists John and Colleen Darnell reconstruct an otherwise untold story of the magnificent reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

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While I love history, I don't consider myself particularly knowledgeable about ancient Egypt. So I was looking forward to learning a little more in Egypt's Golden Couple about Akhenaten and Nefertiti- probably best known (if known at all) as the parents of King Tutankhamun. I knew vaguely that Akhenaten had tried to change Egypt's religion into a more monotheistic focus towards the sun god Aten, but that was all I knew beforehand.

I definitely appreciated that, as Egyptologists themselves, John and Colleen Darnell stuck to physical and written evidence in their interpretation of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. What does the archaeology tell us about their reign? What do writings show about how that might have changed? And, interestingly, what could be put in the context of other pharaohs like Hatshepsut to give us a feel for what would be considered 'normal' versus 'unique'? With rulers as controversial as Akhenaten and Nefertiti, this seemed like a good way to get as much of a feel for them and their world as we are likely to get over 3,000 years later.

The book is written with three styles to it, which took some getting used to. Each chapter starts with a fictionalized imagining of a scene, then moves on to a nonfiction research explanation, archaeological interpretation, or most often a hieroglyph interpretation of another aspect of their rule. I was not a fan of the fictional scenes. I guess the idea was to make things more "real" or "relatable" for the reader, but they really put me off. Much of the rest of the writing was dense, more written for scholars than a layperson like me. The detailed explanations of how the authors interpreted the hieroglyphs as they did was very interesting and certainly made me feel like they knew what they were doing, but went way too much "into the weeds" for my understanding. It was like a lot of the time the book couldn't decide if it was written for scholars and fellow Egyptologists, or for the lay reader to introduce them to Egyptology in general and Akhenaten and Nefertiti in particular, and so tried to do both. The result was often repetitive, frequently interesting, but just as often a dense read.

A book I'd recommend more for people already well versed in Egyptology than the general reader

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review     

 

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

 

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome- Emma Southon

Abrams Press

Release Date: March 9, 2021

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered.

But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside Ancient Rome's darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.

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Anyone who wants to explore Roman history needs to be reading Emma Southon (Agrippina). She tells it like it is (in her view), gleefully abuses sources she finds unreliable but tells you why she finds them unreliable (where they writing 500 years after the events or just trying to make the emperor happy about what his grandfather did?), and analyzes where the truth behind the good stories probably lies. And the good stories in ancient Rome usually revolve around murder. So what does that tell us about the people in Rome?

First, remember that the people writing at the time were men, rich men, Roman men, and Citizens. When you remember that and what it meant at the time (Forum covers the Republic to the High Empire) you know that what these writers would have considered murder and what we in the twenty-first century Western world consider murder are actually very much not the same. Then add in that Romans didn't actually have a law against murder (as we today would consider it), that they expected any killings that were done in the home to be dealt with in the home and absolutely not to be the state's problem and you have a concept of how different things were. Then think about what you do know about ancient Rome (Gladiator anyone?) and how gladiator fights were their version of live streaming TV and in no way considered murder and where are you? 

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum covers everything from murdering your spouse and why this may or may not have been a problem (hint: if you were a woman this was terrible but if you were a man this was considered usually a good way of getting a richer wife- unless you were really stupid about it and your wife's family got Tiberius' attention, in which case you had a problem); murdering your parents/family (Romans really freaked out over that); murdering the enslaved (only worth talking about if it was a spectacle and technically not actually murder); to murdering emperors (how politics got done and kind of a Roman hobby). Southon takes a more Western twenty-first century approach to human beings and explores the lives of the enslaved and women as well as the upper 1% men, searching for the lives behind the stories, sympathizing with them and using this book to show the dark underbelly of the "classical" marble brilliance that is the Roman we all think we know.

Southon's well researched, well written, tongue in cheek, dry British humor should appeal to pretty much everyone. These are the stories we think we know, the ones we don't know, and the ones we can't wait to tell others. From knives to poison, swords to lampreys, this is a book that shows us that as different a world as we think ancient Roman and its people might have been, perhaps the people aren't so different from us after all.  Murder is still a truly universal fact of life.  

The Real Valkyrie

 The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women- Nancy Marie Brown

St. Martin's Press

Release Date: August 31, 2021

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history, and literature to imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.

Nancy Marie Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as The Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data, but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.

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"The Real Valkyrie" studies the history of the Vikings as we know it through a new lens: modern archaeology, free of the Victorian limitations we have allowed to color our thoughts of their world for so long. Others will call it feminist. How about both- as well as extremely interesting and well-written. 

Modern technology has been used to go over bones buried in Birka Bj581, a warrior's grave in Birka, Sweden.  Because of the weapons and others items traditional archaeology has associated with men, this grave was identified as a war leader, a brilliant warrior, and a man.  Today we know the bones are of a woman. Does that make the rest of the story the burial told, that of a well respected warrior, less true? Brown uses modern archaeology to analyze myths, legends, and history to search for the "real valkyrie"- who she argues was not a mythical being but in fact a warrior woman. Brown argues that women in the Viking age had a much larger role than has previously been assigned to them- that they were capable leaders, rulers, merchants, and warriors just like men. I found her arguments very interesting and certainly found myself agreeing that we cannot look at history through the filter of those who wrote about other people. In the case of the Vikings, this would mean men, Christian men, telling about a world that was already hundreds of years in the past when they were writing, and whose world view they could no longer understand. 

The multiethnic society of the Viking world, Brown argues, was a world where power did not come from one person (the pope) and filter down, it was not a world organized by kings as we would come to understand it later. It was a world where talent, need, and opportunity should focus your path and your gender did not limit you.  The idea of the Viking woman as the key-holder and mistress of the house is, according to Brown, the Victorian interpretation of the Vikings because that was how the Victorians viewed the world. And we haven't updated them since.  Here, Brown argues successfully that we should look at what archaeological sites tell us without preconceived notions, and we should not ignore the evidence that goes against what we think we already know.  Because Birka Bj581 is not the only grave of a warrior who has been reexamined and found to be a woman.  

Brown's The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women turns traditional images of the Viking world on its head and presents a vivid, well-researched, and fascinating exploration of life in the Viking Age through  a new lens. From the everyday to the afterlife, this is the world as archaeological finds show it might have been.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review 

Agrippina

Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman in the Roman World- Emma Southon
Pegasus Books
Release Date: August 6, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Sister of Caligula. Wife of Claudius. Mother of Nero. The story of Agrippina, at the center of imperial power for three generations, is the story of the Julio-Claudia dynasty―and of Rome itself, at its bloody, extravagant, chaotic, ruthless, and political zenith.

In her own time, she was recognized as a woman of unparalleled power. Beautiful and intelligent, she was portrayed as alternately a ruthless murderer and helpless victim, the most loving mother and the most powerful woman of the Roman empire, using sex, motherhood, manipulation, and violence to get her way, and single-minded in her pursuit of power for herself and her son, Nero.

This book follows Agrippina as a daughter, born in Cologne, to the expected heir to Augustus’s throne; as a sister to Caligula who raped his sisters and showered them with honors until they attempted rebellion against him and were exiled; as a seductive niece and then wife to Claudius who gave her access to near unlimited power; and then as a mother to Nero―who adored her until he had  her assassinated.

Through senatorial political intrigue, assassination attempts, and exile to a small island, to the heights of imperial power, thrones, and golden cloaks and games and adoration, Agrippina scaled the absolute limits of female power in Rome. Her biography is also the story of the first Roman imperial family―the Julio-Claudians―and of the glory and corruption of the empire itself.

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Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman in the Roman World gives readers something that is hard to find: a biography of a Roman woman.  Agrippina: sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius, mother of Nero.  She was loved and reviled, praised and curse- both today and during her lifetime. Agrippina created new roles for imperial women, and pushed (or outright broke) the accepted role of women in Roman life.

 Emma Southon looks at Agrippina's life as it can be pieced together from ancient sources, but she also gives readers perfect examples of why those sources can't necessarily be trusted.  She immerses the reader in the culture of the Roman world so we can see how our modern views on women, politics, and life in general were not those of Tacitus, Seutonius, and the histories they wrote.That True History can't always be discovered and sometimes the historian has to make their best assumptions- but should also be willing to admit that they are assumptions.

It is clear that Southon is an expert in all things Aggripina and ancient Rome and has done her research.  But her writing style isn't designed to overwhelm the reader with how much she knows or how amazingly academic she is.  Instead, Southon writes as if she is a friend trying to describe Agrippina's life to you over a pint at the local pub.  She is in full casual, brilliant,  story-telling mode; she shreds her original sources for their clear prejudices and unreliability; and presents it all with sparkling English humor, wit, and occasional vulgarity that left me laughing at many of her opinions and insights.  Southon reconstructs Agrippina's life through ancient sources, gives her views on what was mostly likely to happen when Agrippina wasn't being written about, and does a wonderful job of explaining why she thinks that way while reminding the reader when something is only herl speculation or opinion.     

If you only read one book in your life on Agrippina, or the Roman Empire as a whole, it needs to be Emma Southon's Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman in the Roman World. It is a book for people who love history and are looking for a more feminist light to be shone on ancient sources, for those who love history and want to celebrate powerful women the Romans tried to hide in the shadows.  It is also a book for people who think they don't like history and that history is boring.  Just a few pages into Agrippina will convert even the most hardened "history isn't for me" believers. 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Ten Caesars

Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine- Barry Strauss
Simon & Schuster
Release Date: March 5, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Barry Strauss’s Ten Caesars is the story of the Roman Empire from rise to reinvention, from Augustus, who founded the empire, to Constantine, who made it Christian and moved the capital east to Constantinople.

During these centuries Rome gained in splendor and territory, then lost both. The empire reached from modern-day Britain to Iraq, and gradually emperors came not from the old families of the first century but from men born in the provinces, some of whom had never even seen Rome. By the fourth century, the time of Constantine, the Roman Empire had changed so dramatically in geography, ethnicity, religion, and culture that it would have been virtually unrecognizable to Augustus.

In the imperial era Roman women—mothers, wives, mistresses—had substantial influence over the emperors, and Strauss also profiles the most important among them, from Livia, Augustus’s wife, to Helena, Constantine’s mother. But even women in the imperial family faced limits and the emperors often forced them to marry or divorce for purely political reasons.

Rome’s legacy remains today in so many ways, from language, law, and architecture to the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. Strauss examines this enduring heritage through the lives of the men who shaped it: Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Diocletian and Constantine. Over the ages, they learned to maintain the family business—the government of an empire—by adapting when necessary and always persevering no matter the cost. Ten Caesars is essential history as well as fascinating biography.

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A concise, yet detailed, history of the Roman Empire and its emperors in one book seems like it would be impossible.  Yet in Ten Emperors: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine Barry Strauss manages the feat.  Structuring his book around ten of the most influential of the Roman emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Diocletian, and Constantine) Strauss provides readers with a comprehensible, detailed view of the Roman Empire: its rise, its fall, and everything in between.

Each chapter provides a biography of an emperor, examines the larger world he grew up in, how he came to the throne, and the impacts he had on the empire- whether for better or worse.  Strauss also explores the sources this information comes from and reminds us that many of the more famous stories (like Nero fiddling while Rome burned) were written by people with their own agendas and not a recording of unbiased facts.  Whether today we can believe what is generally "known" about many of these figures is often up for debate and Strauss does not hesitate to say so.

Another excellent highlight of Ten Caesars is Strauss' crediting the powerful women involved in the empire.  Mothers, sisters, and wives of emperors get their due here as influential people- even if women technically played no part in Roman politics.  Strauss is upfront about the idea that Roman society itself often felt threatened by powerful women, and so stories of women poisoning their emperors husbands, fathers, brothers, etc abounded.  The reality probably involved far less poisoning.  Although since women around the emperors were used as pawns to strengthen dynastic alliances, and those alliances often involved the emperors than murdering the men their women married, one can see the temptation.

Although often repetitive, Ten Caesars is well-researched, well written, and maintains a steady pace.  Whether novice or expert on the Roman Empire and its emperors, any reader will enjoy Strauss' Ten Emperors and come away from it with a more detailed understanding of this fascinating and complicated period of history, and the men and women who influenced it.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review