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Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Dando-collins
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $11.62
You Save: $14.33 (55%)
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 69943
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Printing
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 047013741X
Dewey Decimal Number: 937.07092
EAN: 9780470137413
ASIN: 047013741X
Publication Date: February 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Could the killing of Germanicus Julius Caesar#8212;the grandson of Mark Antony, adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, father of Caligula, and grandfather of Nero#8212;while the Roman Empire was still in its infancy have been the root cause of the empire's collapse more than four centuries later? This brilliant investigation of Germanicus Caesar#8217;s death and its aftermath is both a compelling history and first-class murder mystery with a plot twist Agatha Christie would envy.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Highly Recommended June 8, 2008
Mark S. Wallace (Los Angeles)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Blood of the Caesars is a great read. It moves swiftly, holds the reader's interest and strikes a superb balance between providing too much detail and providing too little. It is also somewhat of a murder mystery, and at the end of the book Dando-Collins gives his opinion as to the identity of the murderer of Germanicus Caesar. br / br /Dando-Collins's contention that the murder of Germanicus led to the fall of Rome is a bit too much to swallow. It ignores the restoration of stability during the Flavian dynasty under Vespasian and Titus and, after a number of bad years under Domitian, the golden age of the "5 good emperors" (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius). Almost one full century of good rulers undid the damage that occurred in the 40-odd years after Germanicus death. br / br /There may be a key error in the book that undermines his theory of the identity of Germanicus's murderer. Dando-Collins writes that Augustus's daughter Julia died of "natural causes", but other sources say that she was starved to death shortly after Tiberius took the throne. Now, it turns out that Aggripina the Elder, Nero Germanicus and Drusus Germanicus were also starved to death. Beginning to see a pattern here? Especially noteworthy is the death of Drusus Germanicus, which clearly occurred on Tiberius's orders following the execution of Sejanus. (Sejanus is sometimes blamed for the other two deaths). Tiberius had few qualms about murdering his family and is the most likely candidate for the person who ordered the death of Germanicus.
 Very Nice Mystery April 7, 2008
Agustin Guerrero (Guayaquil, Guayas Ecuador)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have enjoyed before the books relating the History of the Roman Legions by author Dando-Collins, especially Nero's Killing Machine that gives background on the campaigns of Germanicus and how he become recognized as one of Rome's best military commanders. In this new book he gives us an intriguing possibility about the untimely death of Germanicus and we are confonted with evidence linking this death to a murder commited by a very well known character in Rome's history. I believe that the conclusions make sense but since this a 2000 year old mystery the case will remain unsolved foerever but his conclusions are very interesting. As far as the death of Germanicus being the cause for the later fall of the Western Roman Empire I believe that is stretching history a little bit too far, I believe even if Germanicus reached the position of Emperor, Rome would have fallen eventually to barbarian invasions and to internal decomposition as the seeds of decay lay in the internal foundations of Roman society namely: slavery, poverty, militarism and many other reasons than just bad goverment of a few emperors. If Germanicus could have finished the conquest of Germany eventually barbarians from the East namely Goths, Alans, Huns and others would have eventually overan Rome. But anyways I thoroughly enjoyed the book, new conclusions different from Robert Graves version of this famous murder as stated in I Claudius.
Not bad at all March 14, 2008
John Fahey (Middletown, NJ USA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is an interesting look at the murder of Germanicus Ceasar. All the suspects are examined with some surprising conclusions. A recomended read for those interested in early Imperial times.
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