According to Francis Bacon, the House of York was ‘a race often dipped in its own blood’. That being so, one wonders what Bacon made of Rome’s Julio-Claudian dynasty, the gore-spattered family that gave the empire its first five rulers, and the subject of Tom Holland’s latest popular history of the ancient world.
Recounting one of the era’s many fratricidal civil wars, Holland rightly observes: ‘The aptitude of the Roman people for killing, which had first won them their universal dominion, was now unleashed upon themselves.’ And no one was more adept at such incestuous slaughter than the imperial family itself.
The dynasty’s strongman founding father, Augustus, was probably the least murderous of the lot and had many positive reforms to his credit. After avenging his great-uncle Julius Caesar’s murder by destroying his assassins, and his own erstwhile ally Marc Antony, Augustus seized the reins of power himself.
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