Book description
20p>p>
In this elegant and rigorously researched biography, Matthew Dennison
rescues the historical Livia from this crudely drawn caricature of the
popular imagination. He depicts a complex, courageous and richly
gifted woman whose true crime was not murder but the exercise of
power, and who, in a male-dominated society, had the energy to create
for herself both a prominent public profile and a significant sphere
of political influence.<
Empress of Rome is a brand-new biography of one of the most
fascinating, perplexing and powerful figures of the ancient world: the
empress Livia. Second wife of the emperor Augustus and the mother of
his successor Tiberius, Livia has been vilified by posterity (most
notably by Tacitus and Robert Graves) as the quintessence of the
scheming Roman matriarch, poisoning her relatives one by one to smooth
her sons path to the imperial throne.<
20p>p>
In this elegant and rigorously researched biography, Matthew Dennison
rescues the historical Livia from this crudely drawn caricature of the
popular imagination. He depicts a complex, courageous and richly
gifted woman whose true crime was not murder but the exercise of
power, and who, in a male-dominated society, had the energy to create
for herself both a prominent public profile and a significant sphere
of political influence.<
Empress of Rome is a brand-new biography of one of the most
fascinating, perplexing and powerful figures of the ancient world: the
empress Livia. Second wife of the emperor Augustus and the mother of
his successor Tiberius, Livia has been vilified by posterity (most
notably by Tacitus and Robert Graves) as the quintessence of the
scheming Roman matriarch, poisoning her relatives one by one to smooth
her sons path to the imperial throne.<
