Book Review: "Palatine: An Alternative History of the Caesars"

In his new book, Peter Stothard provides a fascinating and refreshing view of the Julio-Claudians from the point of those who enabled their rule.

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It’s a good time to be a fan of popular histories of ancient Rome. In just the past year we’ve seen a number of great volumes hit shelves from such heavy-hitting popular historians as Mary Beard, Tom Holland and, for the purposes of this review, Peter Stothard. Stothard is no stranger to the cutthroat world of antiquity, having published volumes dealing with pivotal moments and figures in ancient Rome, including Caesar’s assassination and the revolt of Spartacus. In Palatine: An Alternative History, he turns his attention to the rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, though with a unique focus: the bureaucrats and other palace servants who kept the gears of the Palatine Hill turning.

 Stothard has a breezy, conversational style that sweeps you up from the first moment. In the course of his story we meet a variety of palace servants who began to cluster around the nerve center of imperial power, including freedmen, courtiers, and others whose duty it was to not only see to the emperor’s bodily needs but also to make sure that the government functioned. He pays particular attention to the clan of the Vitelli, a cluster of relatively minor aristocrats who rose from humble origins to the peak of power, first by making themselves invaluable parts of the imperial retinue and then, in the tumultuous and deadly Year of the Five Emperors, briefly occupying the imperial throne themselves. 

At the same time, the men who donned the purple loom large in Stothard’s account, and he doesn’t shy away from giving us the gruesome and titillating details of their reigns. Anyone who has seen I, Claudius will recognize some of the key players here, but Stothard’s undeniable skill as a writer means that we don’t resent hearing some of the same stories that we’ve heard before. For much of the book the Vitelli lurk in the background, serving important imperial functions but only rarely coming into the spotlight, whether flattering Caligula or even marrying briefly into the royal family. 

There’s a biting sense of humor to Stothad’s account that, while prominent, never becomes distracting. There are numerous times when he makes you feel as if you are actually a fly on the wall–or a servant or slave against the wall–witnessing all of the many goings-on in the more sinister corners of the Palatine Hill or on the island of Capri where Tiberius spent the later years of his reign. Like so many other historians before him, including the ancients, Stothard loves to indulge in the excesses of imperial rule, showing how Augustus and his successors, for all of their periodic claims to adherence old-fashioned beliefs in restraint, were really just as inclined to give into their appetites as any other dissolute aristocrat or pleb.

Refreshingly, Stothard also shows us the women who were vital to the prolongation and longevity of the Julio-Claudians. We meet Julia, Augustus’ wayward daughter, eventually banished for vague reasons and left to starve to death after his death, as well as her formidable daughter Agrippina, who became a diehard foe of Tiberius who would eventually meet a fate very similar to that of her mother. Likewise we get to spend some time with Agrippina’s daughter who bore her name and became one of the most powerful women of her dynasty, wielding significant power over her son before meeting her fate at his soldier’s hands. And, of course, we also encounter the redoubtable Sextilia, mother of Aulus, who had little but contempt for her son, even once he donned the purple. Stothard deserves a great deal of credit for elevating these women and their experiences into the limelight.

We also meet some of the other ne’er-do-wells who were key to the despotism that took root in the Julio-Claudian line. Sejanus looms large in this regard, and Stothard dwells with loving and sinister details on his various machinations as he drew ever closer to the throne before having a calamitous fall. With a novelist’s keen eye for drama and pacing, Stothard allows us to lose ourselves in this drama, until we’re standing in the crowd watching the schemer be thrown down the Stairs of Mourning (also known as the Gemonian Stairs) before being tossed into the Tiber. Sejanus, like so many of those who were close to power, learned that it was just as easy to fall as it was to rise. 

Now, to be sure, Stothard doesn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the sources or parsing out whether we can or should believe the accounts of such hostile writers as Suetonius and Tacitus, both of whom had very clear axes to grind when it came to the Julio-Claudians. In that respect he’s very much akin to Tom Holland, who also has a tendency to play fast and loose when it comes to sources, leaving the reader to do their own homework when it comes to the reliability of the ancients. 

Palatine is the kind of book that is designed to keep you up past your bedtime. While it covered a period that I happen to know a great deal about, I did enjoy the opportunity to get to know the Vitelli in a way that I had never done before. When people think of Roman emperors they very rarely think of Aulus Vitellius, even though he had a reputation for gluttony as enduring as any of his predecessors or successors. Stothard paints him as a rather extraordinary sort of survivor, someone who spent his youth catering to the dissolute predations of Tiberius on Capri but who spent almost a year on the throne before being thrown down by the rising might of the Flavians. He might have lived quite an unusual life, but ultimately Vitellius met a gruesome fate not dissimilar to that of Sejanus. It was a rather dismal end for someone who had managed to survive so many of the vicissitudes of the first Roman imperial dynasty. 

Palatine is a refreshing and fast-paced account of an oft-told story. It should make for entertaining reading for anyone fascinated by the Julio-Claudians and those who supported their rule.