PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Holland is a narrative historian who focuses on the vicious competition of court politics. He is at his best when describing the details of (often alleged) plots against the emperors, and their brutal suppression ... Holland gives us a powerful sense of the sheer instability that often surrounded the post of ruler ... olland reflects what we find in our sources. We hear much more about what the Roman elite thought than we do about those they ruled. Like the literati of the Roman elite, we are left to gawp at the emperors.
