Twelve Caesars
Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Bollingen Series)
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Narrated by:
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Mary Beard
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By:
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Mary Beard
About this listen
This audiobook narrated by best-selling author Mary Beard explores how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power.
What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today’s “sculpture wars” - Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars”, from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns.
Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the 19th-century African American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of now-forgotten weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority.
From Beard’s reconstruction of Titian’s extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII’s famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes some fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created.
Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Critic reviews
“Deftly weaving together past and present, this elegantly written book analyzes the allure of Roman imperial iconography from the early modern period up to the present day. Often reading like a detective novel, it focuses on the formation of a canonical group of 12 Caesars that were invented and reinvented, interpreted and reinterpreted, for purposes that varied from a simple lust for collecting to political self-fashioning.” (Patricia Fortini Brown, author of The Venetian Bride: Bloodlines and Blood Feuds in Venice and Its Empire)
“An exceptionally well written and lively book, there is nothing like Twelve Caesars. The book is consistently informative and entertaining. The range of reference across art history from the 15th to the 19th centuries, as well as in the author’s more expected arena of command in antiquity, is staggering and deeply impressive.” (Jaś Elsner, author of Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text)
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For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Thirty years ago, a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany, both geography and history have always been unstable.
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Engaging and Informative
- By William on 06-15-24
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Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
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Story
Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature. The idea for this book, which is entirely new, is to invite the listener into an intimate conversation with a selection of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to let each of those manuscripts illuminate the Middle Ages and sometimes the modern world too.
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I've been waiting a long time for a book like this
- By Robert on 04-15-18
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Leonardo and the Last Supper
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
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Early in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began work in Milan on what would become one of history's most influential and beloved works of art - The Last Supper. After a dozen years at the court of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, Leonardo was at a low point personally and professionally: at 43, in an era when he had almost reached the average life expectancy, he had failed, despite a number of prestigious commissions, to complete anything that truly fulfilled his astonishing promise.
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Informative yet creative
- By Isabellabasil on 05-27-15
By: Ross King
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The Parthenon Enigma
- By: Joan Breton Connelly
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis - the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state - from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme.
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dope book, lacked depth but overall worthwhile
- By Nicholas on 06-29-15
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The Writing of the Gods
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Story
The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries.
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Hieroglyphs For The People
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Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo began work on a painting that became one of the most famous pieces of art in the world - the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Every year millions of people come to see Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest of Christianity's chapels; yet there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork.
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Well-researched!
- By Natalie K. on 08-28-17
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The Bookseller of Florence
- The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
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The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
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Great book, Horrible narrator
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Red Land, Black Land
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Esteemed Egyptologist Barbara Mertz updates her widely praised social history of the people of ancient Egypt, which was originally published in 1968. Combining impeccable scholarship with a delightfully personal style, the author reconstructs the life of the Egyptians from birth to death, and beyond death, too.
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Brilliant
- By Elizabeth on 04-03-10
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Thebes
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Performance
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Story
Among the extensive writing available about the history of ancient Greece, there is precious little about the city-state of Thebes. At one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been long overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta. In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, acclaimed classicist and historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life and argues that it is central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks' achievements - whether politically or culturally.
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Why is this author considered an expert scholar of Ancient Greece?
- By DaneDeer on 11-06-20
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The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World
- By: Robert Garland, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Robert Garland
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Overall
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Performance
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Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.
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Tantalizing time trip
- By Mark on 08-21-13
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The Vanishing Velázquez
- A 19th Century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece
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When John Snare, a 19th-century provincial bookseller, traveled to a liquidation auction, he stumbled on a vivid portrait of King Charles I that defied any explanation. The Charles of the painting was young - too young to be king - and yet also too young to be painted by the Flemish painter to which the work was attributed. Snare had found something incredible - but what? His research brought him to Diego Velázquez, whose long-lost portrait of Prince Charles has eluded art experts for generations.
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A fascinating study of art history
- By Ron on 07-02-16
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son.
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Erudite. Stimulating. Rewarding.
- By R. P. RIBEYRE on 10-26-20
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Beard guides the reader through the Classics
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Story of the Fall of the republic told in a very lively manner.
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The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart.
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A New HIstory but not a better history
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Roman warfare was relentless in its pursuit of victory. A ruthless approach to combat played a major part in Rome's history, creating an empire that eventually included much of Europe, the Near East and North Africa. What distinguished the Roman army from its opponents was the uncompromising and total destruction of its enemies. Yet this ferocity was combined with a genius for absorbing conquered peoples, creating one of the most enduring empires ever known. In Roman Warfare, celebrated historian Adrian Goldsworthy traces the history of Roman warfare.
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Not much here.
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What listeners say about Twelve Caesars
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- B. Coleman
- 06-03-22
A let down.
I adore Mary Beard, and I'm fascinated by Rome. But this feels more like one of those cash-grab albums a fading musician puts out - a third stuff you've heard before, a third stuff you've heard before but with new production, and a third stuff you could honestly do without.
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- Kindle Customer
- 03-29-23
Difficult to follow but enticing art history.
Difficult , but informative. Made me want to read More about art history! I love Mary beard's voice And the fact That she is so Accessible
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- Kindle Customer
- 03-12-22
Love it!
Usually audio books don't keep my attention, my mind wanders, but the info in this and Prof. Beard's learned yet snarky delivery kept me hooked.
Production was good although a little more removal of "ssss" and popping sounds would have been nice. Liked having the PDF of pictures, but it would have been INFINITELY better if the pix could have been enlarged and you didn't have to scroll through all of them every time.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Terri Walker
- 10-28-23
Complex but thorough
Mary beard, as usual, gives us a thorough examination of the Caesars. She searches details that are not always found in other examinations of Rome and the Roman.
This book is often challenging as it informs. She does draw us a picture, and we can see how complicated Roman society was at the time of the Caesars.
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- Ohhhhh Yeaaaaaah!!!!
- 07-06-22
Mary is amazing!
I've read countless books on Caesar and the Roman Empire. Mary Beard is by far my favorite source of information. Nothing beats pouring a glass of wine and watching one of her documentaries or listening to an audiobook at the end of a long day.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mini
- 08-11-23
Rambling and reiteration
I love Mary Beard, but this is a rambling collection of factoids that are presented out of historic order. It is more of a dry scholarly paper for coin nerds, not a book.
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- victor ochoa
- 04-11-22
avoid this
disappointing, not what i expected . intended audience needs to be made very very clear
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- Mike
- 09-22-23
I was bored
not what I expected from Mary Beard. I wanted to like it but found myself bored and fast forwarding through the chapters going for something interesting.
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1 person found this helpful
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- C. S. Wynne
- 03-11-22
Not what I was expecting
I love Mary Beard’s writing and was expecting a concise history of the twelve Caesars. I got a report on Roman coins and statues and how they were perceived in the time after the fall of the Roman Empire. Very disappointing.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Stephen J Chiulli
- 11-10-21
This foray into art history is a disappointment.
I have read most or all of Professor B's books but gave up on this one. I found that I didn't care about which copy of a painting ended up in one collection or another. I was unwilling to go to th he pdf for images so had only the narration to follow. Not an appropriate book for listening on Audible in my humble opinion.
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7 people found this helpful