Death on the Palatine: Cold Cases of the Roman Emperors

The Happy Archaeologist is delighted to announce that he has signed a contract with Icon Books to publish Death on the Palatine: Cold Cases of the Roman Emperors in April 2027.

 Few Roman emperors died a natural death. Some fell in battle, heroically or otherwise. Others were assassinated, often gruesomely, or took their own lives. But many, the most powerful men in their known world, fell in questionable circumstances. We don’t know the true cause of their deaths, relying on hearsay and modern speculation. But what are the facts? Can we get to the truth about these dubious deaths? And if not, how close can we truly get? Here, using a historical detective approach first applied in his acclaimed Roman Britain’s Missing Legion, a BBC History 2021 book of the year, Dr Simon Elliott FSA will use crime scene investigation techniques ancient and modern – and his deep academic knowledge of the Roman world – to review the demise of 12 emperors whose deaths would today attract the interest of the homicide squad.           

Each chapter will focus on one cold case. For example was Augustus murdered by his wife Livia Drusilla (pictured) with poisoned figs to make way for her son Tiberius. Was Claudius poisoned by Agrippina the Younger with a bowl of his favourite mushrooms to set Nero on the throne? Did Commodus or a crony really kill Marcus Aurelius as depicted in Gladiator and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire? And was Valerian flayed alive and turned into a mounting block by the Persian king Shapur I.  

Dr Simon Elliott FSA said:

Many stories from the Roman world are known, but many are not. Here I focus on the latter, looking the means, motive and opportunity in each of the 12 cases to reach a conclusion about whether each of these emperors was murdered or not.