{"title":"Books by Anthony A. Barrett","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780198854579","title":"The Emperor Caligula in the Ancient Sources","description":"There can be few historical figures who have made such a powerful impact on the popular imagination as the Roman emperor Caligula (died AD 41). Yet an accurate reconstruction of his life and reign largely eludes us. This is paradoxical. The source material is plentiful, even lavish, by the standards of antiquity. The problem lies not so much in the quantity of evidence available, but in its quality. For our information we are obliged to draw on ancient accounts that can be colourful and wonderfully entertaining but have a flexible notion of historical truth and often seem to border on fiction. The consequence is that there is hardly a detail that the modern historian can present without deep reservations about its reliability. A biography of Caligula, in the regular modern sense of the word, is an insurmountable task, and can be at best be a summary personal interpretation by an individual historian of a mass of incoherent and often inconsistent material. Where does this leave the serious general reader? This book approaches Caligula from a quite different angle, by presenting the reader with the raw material of the ancient sources. It provides over 300 translated passages of texts, taken mainly from ancient writers, but also from coins and inscriptions. The translations are accompanied by extensive introductions and notes. These are tailored to the non-specialist, and intended to help such readers navigate material that is often contradictory, sometimes downright incredible, and helps to place events and institutions in their historical contexts. The colourful and exotic incidents are still here, but are presented in a context that will help the reader gain a more sophisticated understanding of how scholars try to reconstruct events of the past. This approach allows the reader to tackle head-on the stark reality that what we read in our sources is not necessarily the truth.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56226843394421,"sku":"9780198854579","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780198854579_3e6bc8a2-69f9-40e2-9357-7f8e1c602cfb.jpg?v=1786033284"},{"product_id":"9780415658447","title":"Caligula","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCaligula\u003c\/em\u003e remains the only full length and detailed scholarly analysis in English of this emperor's reign. However, since publication of the original there have been considerable scholarly advances in what we know about this emperor specifically, and also about the general period in which he functioned, while newly discovered inscriptions and major archaeological projects have necessitated a rethinking of many of our earlier conclusions about early imperial history. This new edition constitutes a major revision of the original text. Embodying the latest discoveries and thinking it seeks to make more lucid and comprehensible those aspects of the reign that are particularly daunting to the non-specialist.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56290066596213,"sku":"9780415658447","price":210.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780415658447_832af55d-a44d-4a57-a158-a223570ad4eb.jpg?v=1786013428"},{"product_id":"9780691233949","title":"Rome Is Burning – Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty","description":"Drawing on new archaeological evidence, an authoritative history of Rome’s Great Fire—and how it inflicted lasting harm on the Roman EmpireAccording to legend, the Roman emperor Nero set fire to his majestic imperial capital on the night of July 19, AD 64 and fiddled while the city burned. It’s a story that has been told for more than two millennia—and it’s likely that almost none of it is true. In Rome Is Burning, distinguished Roman historian Anthony Barrett sets the record straight, providing a comprehensive and authoritative account of the Great Fire of Rome, its immediate aftermath, and its damaging longterm consequences for the Roman world. Drawing on remarkable new archaeological discoveries and sifting through all the literary evidence, he tells what is known about what actually happened—and argues that the disaster was a turning point in Roman history, one that ultimately led to the fall of Nero and the end of the dynasty that began with Julius Caesar.   Rome Is Burning tells how the fire destroyed much of the city and threw the population into panic. It describes how it also destroyed Nero’s golden image and provoked a financial crisis and currency devaluation that made a permanent impact on the Roman economy. Most importantly, the book surveys, and includes many photographs of, recent archaeological evidence that shows visible traces of the fire’s destruction. Finally, the book describes the fire’s continuing afterlife in literature, opera, ballet, and film.   A richly detailed and scrupulously factual narrative of an event that has always been shrouded in myth, Rome Is Burning promises to become the standard account of the Great Fire of Rome for our time.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":56293409259893,"sku":"9780691233949","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57688228069749,"sku":"9780691172316","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691233949.jpg?v=1792686167"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-anthony-a-barrett.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}