How The Murder Of Germanicus Led To The Fall Of Rome By Stephen Dando-Collins

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The book that I chose to discuss is Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins. The thesis of his book is that the murder of Germanicus Julius Caesar led to the eventually fall of the Roman Empire. I believe Dando-Collins decided to write on this particular event in the Roman history because he had a thirst of knowledge to learn more about Germanicus and the mystery began to become solved due to new evidence. This author has also written on various other topics on the civilization of ancient Rome such as: Julius Caesar, Nero’s reign of killing, the kidnapping of Cleopatra, and Mark Antony. This exhibits his experience he possesses of researching and writing about the military and empire …show more content…

His primary argument is that the killing of Germanicus was intentionally murdered, he knows who the killer is and why the act was committed, and the murder of Germanicus led to the decline of the Rome Empire. There are numerous events that directly affected the decline of the Roman Empire and twice as many reasons that added up the fall of Rome. This author is stating that the particular event of the murder of Germanicus is one major reason to the fall of Rome. Even though there are no articles that I could find to directly oppose or agree with this historian’s book; there are several articles to support the thesis found in the Blood of the Caesars.
Stephan Dando-Collins structures the book and overall his argument in a chronological order. He begins with the murderous act of killing Germanicus Caesar. The event takes place in Syria in October in the year of 19 AD. “Germanicus fell ill whilst on an unauthorized visit to Egypt” is how the wife of Germanicus, Agrippina, described his condition while on his deathbed and Dando-Collins writes that Germanicus was entirely convinced that he poisoned. While the …show more content…

I’m going to show both sides of the argument. On the side of agreement, the article, “Julians and Claudians”, states that the killing of Germanicus deprived Rome of having a charismatic leader who would be loved by the populace. This article agrees with the book because the article is concentrated on the genealogy of the Caesar bloodline. Any change in the reigns of different rulers could significantly affect the bloodline of the Caesars such as the reign of Germanicus. The other side of the argument is of course the opposition. This source agrees in some aspects such as the fact Germanicus believed that he was poisoned and that Germanicus was one of the most popular Romans to ascend to the throne. The disagreement come with Germanicus believing that Piso had poisoned him not Seneca and Agrippina. While this particular book has yet to be dissected and argued by other historians there are articles to support and fight points that were laid out in Blood of the

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