Volume 37, Number 19 · December 6, 1990
Life Styles of the Rich and Famous
By Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Caligula: The Corruption of Power
by Anthony A. Barrett
Yale University Press, 334 pp., $27.50
Claudius
by Barbara Levick
Yale University Press, 256 pp., $25.00
Since ancient times, much of the historical writing about communities governed by monarchies has taken the form of royal or imperial biography. Many scholars have deplored this, objecting that too much concentration on rulers removes attention from the realm as a whole and concentrates it on the capital, encouraging the biographical historian to follow the historians of ancient times, usually members of the governing elite, to assign excessive importance to the fortunes of that body while neglecting the social and economic history of the kingdom or the empire and the administration of its provinces. In the case of the Roman Empire 'bad' emperors like Caligula and Nero, it is argued, made life uncomfortable for the upper class but did not seriously interfere with provincial administration. Thus in his first notable article the most eminent Roman historian of our time, Sir Ronald Syme (1903–1989), refuted a widespread assumption that the 'bad', emperor Domitian must have left the Empire's finances in a parlous state.[1]
Review, 4436 words
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