Emperor of Rome

This study of the Roman imperial office asks what it was like to be emperor rather than narrating one reign from accession to death. Beard examines succession and assassination, the palace and its staff, dining, travel, justice, spectacle, and the emperor's image across the empire, drawing on literature, coins, and archaeology from Julius Caesar and Augustus through the third century. Individual rulers appear as examples of a job that combined absolute power with dependence on courtiers, armies, and rumour. The book is a thematic anatomy of autocracy in the first centuries of the Roman Empire, not a chronological life of one man.

Bound in pattern printed green cloth, gilt blocked on cover with an eagle and title. Black slipcase gilt blocked with a gilt eagle on front. Signed by Mary Beard.