V.D.'s volume stands halfway between historic novel and biography. The book is addressed to a general audience and can be considered a short introductory volume for non-expert readers who wish to know more about the dynamics of imperial succession at the beginning of the Roman Empire. The book aims to present an overview of the life of Tiberius and the main events in Rome during his lifetime with a clear and simple prose, organised in five longer chapters, each divided into numerous and very short sub-chapters.

Chapters 1 and 2, ‘The Longest Breath’ and ‘The Succession’, discuss the years of the Augustan Principate with a central focus on the events related to the imperial succession. Tiberius is presented more as a background character, whose figure is often in contrast with Augustus. V.D., moreover, stresses Tiberius’ difficult personality and his alleged ambition to be Augustus’ heir. Chapter 3, ‘Out of the Shadows’, sees a wider focus on Tiberius’ reign with most of the attention on the two best-known personal narratives in it, Germanicus’ popularity and death in ad 19 and the rise and fall of the powerful praetorian prefect Sejanus in ad 31. In fact, sometimes Tiberius does not appear like the protagonist of the narration as much as other people like Augustus or Sejanus do. The last two chapters, ‘The Fall’ and ‘The Last Breath’, quickly summarise the aftermath of Sejanus’ fall and Tiberius’ death in ad 37. The narration is very accelerated, and there is little emphasis on the last controversial moments of Tiberius’ life and Caligula's succession.

V.D.'s choice to present the events in short sub-chapters while only offering small packages of information at any one moment is a strategy designed to avoid overwhelming the reader, but it can be problematic on another level. More than once there is no immediate sequence between one sub-chapter and the one that follows, leaving the reader to wonder about the conclusion of the topic analysed before. For example, after a discussion on Marcellus’ death (1.10), Chapter 1.11 focuses on Agrippa and ends with his marriage to Julia. The next chapter (1.12) returns the focus to Marcellus and to Octavia's reaction to his death. Then, in Chapter 1.13, Agrippa's marriage with Julia is the central topic again. The fragmentary nature of the narration, with flashbacks as well as numerous chronological and thematic jumps, can be confusing, especially for a non-expert neophyte getting their head around the Julio-Claudian intricate familial bonds or the political situation in Rome and in the Empire at that time.

Methodologically speaking, v.D. chooses not to mention any primary or secondary sources in the narration, apart from a few exceptions. This choice, albeit understandable with the intention of presenting a general introduction to the period, is sometimes difficult to justify completely. It is important, I believe, to make it clear whether information is found in a contemporary and overall positive evaluator of Tiberius such as Velleius Paterculus or in one of his more common later detractors like Tacitus or Suetonius. The ‘Afterword’ section at the end (pp. 177–84) functions as a brief explanation of the ancient material used to write the book. However, it would have been useful to have at least a couple of sentences at the beginning of the book on the nature of ancient historiography and the potential influence of rhetoric on it. It is always important, even for non-academic readers, to be aware of how influenced and biased the ancient texts can be and how they can offer a different perspective of the same character according to the circumstances in which they are written (as all literary texts do). This is particularly relevant when the narration concerns the figure of Tiberius. This decision to withhold sources also results in generalised statements and biased information, without offering the reader the possibility of double-checking them against the original source and context.

An example of this tendency can be seen when we read the story of Tiberius’ pet snake and his detached behaviour in the aftermath of Sejanus’ fall in the prologue: ‘The emperor held his pet snake and fed her a few more tidbits … He loved her as much as he did his homegrown cucumbers. The shrieks of fear and horror on the streets did not reach him in his palace. Tiberius was not even in Rome’ (p. xix). The information about Tiberius’ snake (Suet. Tib. 72) is decontextualised and used to write a sketch of Tiberius’ behaviour that aims to present him as a negative figure already at the beginning of the narration. The use of modern terminology and comparisons can also be risky. ‘Dictator’, in its modern connotation, is used to describe Augustus’ power (p. 13) as well as the great personalities that rose during the first century bc, such as Julius Caesar (p. 15). However, considering the original meaning of the title in the Roman Republic, held only by Sulla and Caesar in the last first century bc, and Augustus’ firm refusal to hold it, the term should be used with more caution. The same difficulty is seen in the ‘Afterword’, where v.D. ventures a comparison between the portryal of Tiberius in the ancient texts and the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi: ‘According to the Roman historians … he indulged in the greatest depravity: the image of Tiberius as a sort of ancient Berlusconi forces itself unavoidably upon the modern reader's mind’ (p. 180). A comparison that should not be taken for granted and is definitely not ‘unavoidable’. To conclude, the bibliography cited at the end, despite being quite comprehensive, is also generally dated and does not include major works on the Tiberian age, such as E. Champlin's ‘Tiberius the Wise’, Historia 57 (2008), 408–25 or A. Pettinger's The Republic in Danger: Drusus Libo and the Succession of Tiberius (2012).

Despite these technicalities that catch the attention of the ancient scholar, the book is written in an engaging and vivid tone. Readers might feel like they are experiencing the events as they happen and learning about a period of Roman history that is often neglected by literature on the ancient world addressed to a wider public. But the wider public also deserves to see the agendas, the biases and the complexity behind the tale of Tiberius as well as the ‘story’ itself.