Nearly everything I know about the Roman Empire comes from passing references or popular culture. I had to read Julius Caesar in high school, though I don't think I actually did read it. Later on in my teens, I, Claudius was broadcast on Masterpiece Theater and I loved it so much. I remember trying to map out the complex and incestuous connections among the emperors. (This was before the modern internet, so it's not like I could just google Roman Empire Family Tree and find this.) Since that time, I can't say I've given much thought to the intrigues of the Roman imperial family. I will say, my interest in the Roman Empire was somewhat raised recently, when I visited the Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, Spain.
In any case, my initial interest in reading Augustus had little to do with any interest in Roman history. I read John Williams' Stoner a few years back and loved it. When I subsequently learned he'd written a National Book Award winning novel called Augustus, I thought I should read it too. I had no idea what it was about. It was only last September, when I was visiting my dad and found it among his collection of NYRB Classics that I discovered it was about the Emperor Augustus (not really a topic I would have expected based solely on having read Stoner).
Augustus is an epistolary novel covering the period from the death of Julius Caesar to the death of Augustus. It features (nearly entirely fabricated) letters and diaries from all sorts of figures from the period whose names I knew, without knowing much about them -- Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Antony and Cleopatra... among many others. The book does a truly beautiful job of telling the history of Augustus' reign (with I have no idea what level of accuracy) from many different angles. Reading it made me want to read Virgil and Horace and Ovid. There are two things I really wish Augustus included: a map and a dramatis personae. As I've written before, I love a book with a map, but a map would have been especially helpful in this book as a lot of the Roman place names referenced are not the modern names I'm familiar with. And a dramatis personae would have really helped both with some of the complex family relationships, but also with the wider cast of characters, who shared a lot of common names. However, both of these things are small quibbles (that can easily be remedied with online searches) with what was really a wonderful book. If I have a larger concern, it's the sympathetic picture it paints of Augustus. It reminded me a bit of Wolf Hall in its successful humanization of a clearly problematic figure -- though that is also what is so remarkable about both books. Augustus served as an introduction to the early Roman Empire to me, and will no doubt bias my understanding of it for years to come (as I, Claudius has done these last 25 years).
