Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar

by Tom Holland

Even those who had suffered most terribly at his hands, and had every reason to execrate his memory, could not help but acknowledge the charisma of the House of Caesar. Some three decades after Nero’s suicide, a Christian named John recorded a vision of the end days revealed to him by an angel. Out of the sea he had seen a seven-headed beast rise; ‘and one of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound’.109 What was the wound, so many who read John’s vision would wonder with dread, if not the sword blow to the throat with which Nero had ended his own life?*8 The wound, so the angel had revealed to John, was destined to be healed; and the beast, which ‘was, and is not’,110 would rise from the bottomless pit. On its back would ride a woman; and the woman would be ‘arrayed in purple and scarlet, and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication’.111 Rarely before had the Rome ruled by the August Family been made to sound so glamorous.