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Authors: Anthony Blond
A Brief History of the Private Lives of the Roman Emperors
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
The Private Lives of The Roman Emperors
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To Mary Hesketh & to Georgia de Chamberet
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
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London W6 9ER
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First published in the UK by Quartet Books Limited 1994
This edition published by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2008
Copyright © Anthony Blond 1994
The right of Anthony Blond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-84529-719-0
eISBN: 978-1-47210-362-8
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSTo my wife, Laura, for her chapter on Roman food, to Auberon Waugh, editor of
The Literary Review,
who let me write notices of these Emperors’ biographies, and to
James Fergusson, who suggested they be written up into a book; to Lord Bridges, who introduced me to the British School in Rome and to the kindness and hospitality of the Director and the Deputy
Director of that admirable institution; also to the archive department of the British Film Institute.
BIBLIOGRAPHYThere isn’t one. Publications are acknowledged in the text. I have used the Ancient Roman historians and am indebted to Penguin, not only for the relevant Penguin
Classics but also for
Who’s Who in the Ancient World
by Betty Radice, which Anthony Blond published in hardback in 1971. The glossaries in the historical novels of Colleen McCullough,
The First Man in Rome,
etc. (Century), are superb works of clarity and scholarship.
Rome in Africa
by Susan Raven, now in its third edition with Routledge, has become a classic, and
the Falco novels of Lindsey Davis (Century) are a delightful way of slipping painlessly into the mores of Ancient Rome.
APOLOGY