tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119816335163312523.post4463739536619788292..comments2023-04-27T04:39:45.647-04:00Comments on JT Thinks About Stuff: Book Review: DynastyJThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12170062950345779215noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119816335163312523.post-7421270080178713892017-03-25T21:10:59.860-04:002017-03-25T21:10:59.860-04:00Your last sentence describes my reaction to the bo...Your last sentence describes my reaction to the book as a whole. It seemed clear to me that Holland got so wrapped up in the juicy bits that those became their own <i>raison d'etre</i>. It's fun to read; it's just not terribly informative, because you can't take any of the information at face value.JThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12170062950345779215noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119816335163312523.post-68168765680643684132017-03-24T18:30:03.039-04:002017-03-24T18:30:03.039-04:00I just finished Dynasty recently, and I liked it, ...I just finished <i>Dynasty</i> recently, and I liked it, but I did get the feeling the original manuscript must have been a bit sticky when Holland handed it in. Quite aside from the "let's take everything people's enemies wrote about them at face value" approach, I thought Holland was overly interested in what specifically might have been the daily routine of the orgies at Capri, so much so that he out-Herods the sources in lurid speculation. (I myself think that Tiberius probably spent his time on Capri reading and living quietly, and I have better reason, since that's what he's known to have done with his free time elsewhere.)<br />I look at this as a problem, since once you've accepted an assumption as true it affects all your subsequent reasoning. For example, take these three known facts about Caligula: for the first year of his reign he was widely praised as a temperate, reasonable person who took his duties seriously and made a large number of excellent policy decisions that everyone approved of. Then he got so sick he almost died. After that he was universally reviled as a monster of cruelty and treated the Senate and Rome generally like dirt. <br />The most reasonable explanation, most modern historians think (I agree, for what that's worth) is that Caligula suffered some sort of brain damage from his fever and became progressively more insane as time went on. Holland, though, to fit his narrative, constructs a psychodrama where the young Caligula was so scarred by witnessing the incredible sexual excesses at orgies in his youth (here Holland digresses to give a picture of what those orgies must have been like, drawn unapologetically from his imagination) that his mind was permanently twisted, and his good behavior in his first year on the throne is explained as Caligula slowly gathering the courage to behave as he wanted to. It's a good story but it's bad history.MPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119816335163312523.post-74128602179760497812016-03-18T20:00:49.505-04:002016-03-18T20:00:49.505-04:00I, Claudius the book was one of the things that go...<i>I, Claudius</i> the book was one of the things that got me interested in Roman history, many years ago. I've seen most of the TV series (and liked it). <i>Dynasty</i> is using many of the same sources as Robert Graves did, so there's a good deal of overlap.JThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12170062950345779215noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119816335163312523.post-83936076463531947862016-03-18T17:07:01.501-04:002016-03-18T17:07:01.501-04:00Most interesting. I shall note this for possible f...Most interesting. I shall note this for possible future consumption. Did you ever see I, Claudius when it came out? I thought it quite good.Varianorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09576040365080504873noreply@blogger.com