After immersing myself in a bunch of tomes, a little light reading (the CAH series volumes, vii, x & xi and a book on selected primary sources from Rome) I come away with my head filled with a bunch of facts about Domitian. Being already somewhat familiar with a couple of key primary sources on him (Suetonius and mentions in Tacitus) I was suprised to stumble across another half a dozen sources with which I was not previously acquainted. That was good. The CAH is superb, as it relates attested inscriptions, a number of coins, and indeed archaeological remains of roads, forts and buildings to the literary sources. The emphasis on philological deductions as well as useful insight into the events surrounding Domitian's reign, that is to say, from the 14th of September 81 to 96 Christian Era.
Although largely focused on the first half of his Principate, especially the years 83-85, I now know an unhealthy amount about this seemingly really quite incongruous emperor. I reserved judgement about whether he was as bad as his critics painted him, but after reviewing much of the evidence (and I don't care if he built a few nice buildings, put some extra metal in coins and paid his personal bodyguards more) I can safely say that this emperor was indeed a very, very naughty boy, to say the least.
Now I have the unenviable task of collating my notes, then trawling through "the holy trinity" of books (the three A340 source books) and finding citations, to make it look as though I have been reading Block 2 the entire time, which I haven't. Instead, I have been reading the CAH, Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny and Suetonius. I wish I had Dio Cassius, Martial and Statius to hand. The on-line libraries are so bloody slow. My books I can flick from page to page with ease, none of this, click... wait... click... wait... (two hours later), "ah! there is the page I needed" nonsense. Anyway, back to the grind.
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