Caesars' Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire

In scandals and power struggles obscured by time and legend, the wives, mistresses, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the Caesars have been popularly characterized as heartless murderers, shameless adulteresses, and conniving politicians in the high dramas of the Roman court. Yet little has been known about who they really were and their true roles in the history-making schemes of imperial Rome's ruling Caesars-indeed, how they figured in the rise, decline, and fall of the empire.

Now, in ...