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Books

Augustus: here was a Caesar! Or at least his great-nephew

Jochen Bleicken’s biography comes to praise the first emperor, not to bury him, finds Harry Mount

5 September 2015

9:00 AM

5 September 2015

9:00 AM

Augustus: The Biography Jochen Bleicken (translated by Anthea Bell)

Allen Lane, pp.784, £30, ISBN: 9780713994773

It’s strange that tourists rarely visit the most famous site in Roman history. The spot in Pompey’s assembly hall where Julius Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March, 44 bc, is right in the middle of Rome, in Largo di Torre Argentina. When I was there, the tourists were only interested in the feral cats that stroll across the murder scene.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £24 Tel: 08430 600033. Harry Mount is the author of Amo, Amas, Amat… and All That, and, most recently, Odyssey: Ancient Greece in the Footsteps of Odysseus.

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