Founded by the emperor Augustus, the Julio-Claudians were ancient Rome's first imperial dynasty. They wielded power ruthlessly but each succession brought with it a crisis and the ever-present threat of civil war until the ruling household collapsed in 69 CE when four rivals violently contended for the throne. Between the reigns of Augustus and "the year of four emperors," despite an invasion of Britain and Jewish unrest in the time of Christ, this was a period of peace more than war.

The history of the Julio-Claudians has been told many times but Palatine presents a view of the early Roman empire that its own historians never wanted us to see. Set inside the houses of the Palatine hill, high on the edge of the ancient Forum, it is a book about two men in particular, a father and son. The father, Lucius Vitellius (c10 BC-AD 51) was one of those quiet flatterers recognizable in many eras, who lived and died in imperial service, ever more powerful as he lived through the successive reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero. The son, Aulus Vitellius (AD 12-69), became briefly an emperor of the Roman world himself, who, against tough competition from both predecessors and successors, set his own standard for gluttony, brutal indolence, and dramatic death. Conveyed in vivid, novelistic prose, Palatine narrates one of the most important half centuries in the history of Europe.