The Roman Empire had a well-developed tabloid press, full of wild and quite explicit sexual rumors. This book is straight out of that tradition and is entertaining as such. How much can you take seriously? Not much. It's not history in any pure sense, but kind of a look back at Rome's tabloid spirit. The Roman tabloid differed from ours in that it lacked our veneer of prudery and puritanism. Even South America's blood-drenched tabloids doesn't have the kind of sexually explicit sensationalism prevalent in the Roman Empire. This book is more like fringe sociology than history. Like a good tabloid of any age, the book is fun and entertaining, but weird.