The Caesars

by Thomas de Quincey

The condition of the Roman Emperors has never yet been fully appreciated; nor has it been sufficiently perceived in what respects it was absolutely unique. -- Thomas De Quincey, The Caesars Originally published in 1853, this intriguing volume incisively examines an era of the ancient past known as "The Caesars." With its reign-by-reign account of the power holders of the "imperial purple," it serves easily as a companion text for classes in classical history. The Caesars weaves a compelling narrative of the rise and fall of the Roman emperors, complete with an historical timeline and dynamic portraits of the major events, influences, and supremacy of ancient Rome. AUTHOR BIO: Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was born Manchester, England, and was educated at schools in Bath and Winkfield but left Oxford without taking a degree. He eventually settled in London, where, in 1807, he became close friends of the romantic writer Taylor Colderidge as well as of William Wordsworth, whom De Quincey greatly admired. De Quincey's influence was later seen in the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire.

Genres: History, Biography

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1832

About the author

Thomas de Quincey was an English author and intellectual, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_d...

Reviews

[شمس · Rating 3 out of 5]

In short, all the heights and the depths which belong to man as aspirers, all the contrasts of glory and meanness, the extremities of what is his highest and lowest in human possibility,—all met in the situation of the Roman Cæsars, and have combined to make them the most interesting studies which history has furnished.

There was but one Rome: no other city . . . either of ancient or modern times, has ever rivalled this astonishing metropolis in the grandeur of magnitude; and not many—if we except the cities of Greece, none at all—in the grandeur of architectural display.

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This short work by De Quincey explores Ancient Rome through the lens of the Caesars; from Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) himself, down to the Emperor Diocletian (244-311 AD). De Quincey draws mainly from the Historia Augusta, Dion Cassius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Herodian.

This was probably somewhat interesting for it's time, and De Quincey does raise some interesting points, but there's no question that there are now much better works exploring the History of Ancient Rome.

Only recommended if you're highly interested in De Quincey himself.

By the by, this edition, at least, seems to simply reprint the copy available via Gutenburg with no formatting or notes whatsoever; footnotes are unhelpfully embedded within the text in [square brackets], and some seem to have been left [open, with no explanation of where the footnote ends. There are no translations of De Quincey's frequent use of latin, and I also think some small portions of the text here and there seem to be missing.
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The Cæsars, throughout their long line, are not interesting, neither personally in themselves, nor derivatively from the tragic events to which their history is attached. Their whole interest lies in their situation—in the unapproachable altitude of their thrones. But, considered with a reference to their human qualities, scarcely one in the whole series can be viewed with a human interest apart from the circumstances of his position.

Looking back to Republican Rome, and considering the state of public morals but fifty years before the emperors, we can with difficulty believe that the descendants of a people so severe in their habits could thus rapidly degenerate, and that a populace, once so hardy and masculine, should assume the manners which we might expect in the debauchees of Daphne (the infamous suburb of Antioch) or of Canopus, into which settled the very lees and dregs of the vicious Alexandria.

Cicero and himself were the only Romans of distinction in that age, who applied themselves with true patriotism to the task of purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware of the transcendent quality of the Grecian literature; but that splendour did not depress their hopes of raising their own to something of the same level.

Why had tragedy no existence as a part of the Roman literature? Because there was too much tragedy in the shape of gross reality, almost daily before their eyes. The amphitheatre extinguished the theatre.

. . . the famous principle of Themistocles, that he should be reputed the first, whom the greatest number of rival voices had pronounced the second.

In some English cavalry regiments, the custom is for the privates to take only one meal a day, which of course is dinner; and by some curious experiments it has appeared that such a mode of life is the healthiest.
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The empire, in the first place, as the most magnificent monument of human power which our planet has beheld, must for that single reason, even though its records were otherwise of little interest, fix upon itself the very keenest gaze from all succeeding ages to the end of time. 

. . . that imperatorial dignity, which having once perished, could have no second existence, and which was undoubtedly the sublimest incarnation of power, and a monument the mightiest of greatness built by human hands, which upon this planet has been suffered to appear.

. . . a scale of grandeur absolutely unparalleled

. . . a great depository of heart-stirring remembrances.