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The horrors of dining with a Roman emperor

Elagabalus’s suffocating party tricks may have been exaggerated, but Domitian’s sinister, death-themed feasts could be seen as a dictator’s flamboyant threat

16 December 2023

9:00 AM

16 December 2023

9:00 AM

Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World Mary Beard

Profile, pp.493, 30

Emperor of Rome? Is there a typo in the title? Mary Beard’s latest book is about not one but 30 Roman emperors, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE), so why the singular? The answer is that Emperor of Rome is a study of autocracy and one autocrat, as Marcus Aurelius put it, is much the same as another: ‘Same play, different cast.

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