The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by Mary Beard

Emperor of Rome: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of Rome. Now she trains her formidable lens on the emperors themselves—the men who ruled from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE through to Alexander Severus in 235 CE—asking the questions that traditional histories have sidestepped.

What power did emperors actually have? Was the palace truly as bloodstained as legend suggests? Beard moves beyond chronological march-through-the-madmen to seek out the emperor in his private world: at home, at the races, on his travels, even on his spiritual ascent to heaven. She introduces his wives and lovers, his rivals and slaves, the court jesters and soldiers who orbited his power, and the ordinary people who thrust desperate petitions into his hands, hoping for salvation.

At 512 pages, lavishly illustrated with colour and black-and-white images, maps, and photographs, Emperor of Rome cuts directly to the heart of Roman—and our own—fantasies about power, empire, and what it meant to be the man at the centre of the ancient world. Beard offers a revolutionary account of imperial history, dismantling myth to reveal the messy, human, deeply contingent reality beneath the toga. Essential reading for anyone who has wondered what emperors were really like.