History is Not Boring discussion
Requesting suggestions for book on Ancient Rome
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Mary JL
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Jan 26, 2010 09:00AM
I am looking for books about ancinet Rome. I would like suggestions geared towards the general reader, rather than scholars, as I am just starting.
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A Noise of War by AJ Langguth is fabulous.
Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire is the new authoritative account of the last years of Rome. It's fantastic and quite ground-breaking. Perhaps a tad dense, but there is no reason not to skip some of the middle chapters. I read the whole thing while on vacation - which is saying something since i do my best not to read when away from work.
If you want to go back to the very beginnings, you should try Tim Cornell's The Beginnings of Rome Italy from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars Ca 1 000-264 BC or Adrian Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars is a very readable account of the creation of Rome's "empire".
I think I know what you're looking for. A good all-round history is Michael Grant's History of Rome (1978) which covers the whole 1,200 years thoroughly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...Michael Grant has written many books on ancient Rome. I have only read one but I know he was an expert on the subject.
Mod
Michael Grant was a good historian and wrote very approachable books for the general audience. He was also fairly prolific in his writings on the ancient world, so you should have a good bit of choice out there. I've read several of his books and enjoyed all of them.
If you're looking for historical fiction books about ancient Rome, I hear that Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series (the first is called The First Man in Rome) is really good and as I understand, pretty accurate. I haven't read them myself, but my husband has read the first few and he really enjoys them.Can anyone else speak to the accuracy of this series?
Mod
Caesar is annoying? He was brilliant. He was a fantastic orator and writer. I have read on more than one occasion that his writings were more vivid and interesting than Shakespeare’s writings about him.Then to top it off he was a genius military leader and superb administrator.
Come to think of it, he is kind of annoying for being so perfect.
Arminius wrote: "Caesar is annoying? He was brilliant. He was a fantastic orator and writer. I have read on more than one occasion that his writings were more vivid and interesting than Shakespeare’s writings about..."He was also very good at ethnic cleansing. Difficult to square with modern ethics, but pretty much par for the course for most of Hx. See his The Conquest of Gaul, I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg though.
Caesar, like Alexander before him and Napoleon after, viewed the world as his playground and armies as toys. I have read and enjoyed McCullough's Rome novels. I would hesitate to use them as a reference for any exact item, but suspect they give you good background.
I concur with Michael Grant. I also remember enjoying Tacitus and Suetonius when I was "in" my Ancient Rome and early emperors phase.
I agree: primary sources are better. Even if they aren't reliable, they give you a better feeling for what Romans thought and felt.
Aye...The Twelve Caesars is a bit like a tabloid take on Hx...gloriously scandalous, but not necessarily accurate.As you said, "...if they aren't reliable, they give you a better feeling for what Romans thought and felt."
Mod
And McCullough is so in love with him that it sometimes gets a little annoying.
I personally find Sulla a far more interesting character in the novels. Disgusting, but fascinating.
That said, I recommend the novels.
I Loved Sulla!! I have only read "First Man in Rome". But he was vile, he had many shades to him.
Mod
I hate Sulla. He sent Ceasar off to the neighboring pedifile ruler. So Ceasar always had to fend off charges that were untrue.
Mod
They--Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Caesar--were all pretty vile . . . kind of like today's politicians. When they are safely removed by a couple thousand years, they make fun reading. It was less fun and more "interesting" for Romans living then.
I hate Sulla in history, although my knowledge of him comes from only one book. Thanks for this discussion. I hadn't read about Rome in a decade and I am getting back into it.
Mod
Sam Gamgee in LOTR said that the tales we most enjoy hearing all the ones we'd least like to live in ourselves, but that he and Mister Frodo were right in the midst of just such a tale, and had no idea how it was going to turn out.Thoughtful Romans of the late Empire saw the steepening slide, but none could imagine how to stop it. I think what they could not imagine was that it would eventually all come to an end. That the walls would be breached, the people killed or enslaved, and weeds would grow in the Forum. That failure of imagination may have been the most deadly ingredient in Rome's demise.
They could--and did--imagine Rome as a great empire; they could not imagine it dying.
I don't think a society can ever see it. The USSR would never have thought in the 60's by 1990 it would be over. Western society has the same view point.
Mod
A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Daily Life, Mysteries, and Curiosities
Really easy read, fun and interesting stuff about everyday people.
Mod
One book that is light, informative and funny is Stanley Bing's Rome Inc:The Rise and Fall of the World's First Multinational Corporation.
It made my Top Ten Reads list for 2009 and was a lot of fun. I briefly reviewed it on my blog. Check it out here: http://maphead.wordpress.com/2009/02/...
And I agree, anything on Rome by Michael Grant on Rome should be good, too. Centuries ago back when I was in college we were assigned one his books in my Late Hellenistic-Early Roman Empire class.
Kim wrote: "If you're looking for historical fiction books about ancient Rome, I hear that Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series (the first is called The First Man in Rome) is..."I started reading the one about Ceasar and Cleopatra but there was too much poor grammar and poor wording and just bad writing that I put it down.
Rusty, I agree. The quality went down as the series progressed.
Try this one: Caesar: Life of a ColossusIt isn't a book about Rome, but it really gives you an idea about Caesar's Rome in a political, social and military point of view.
Good readings,
A.
If we broaden the topic to the classics, that is, add in the Greeks, two books with a narrower focus that I enjoyed are Alexander of Macedon by Peter Green, and The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan.http://xrl.in/4mvp
http://xrl.in/4mvo
On a Roman note, I thought this would be worth sharing, confirming racial diversity at the fringes of Empire:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news...
Returning to the discussion on Julius Caesar:“To Caesar the art of government meant the promotion of any measure, however inconsistent with his previous or even present professions, that promised to advance the next in his plans; his only long-range objective which can be definitely identified was the enhancement of his power. For this he indulged in a lifetime of double talk, professing slogans of democracy, while debasing and destroying the powers of the electorate, and insisting on constitutional technicalities, while persistently undermining the constitution. In the end, his prescription for government turned out to be a surprisingly simple one: to reduce its mechanism to the simplest and most primitive of all institutional forms, personal absolutism, and to employ it for one of the simplest and most primitive of all purposes, foreign conquest.”
Dickinson, John. Death of a Republic: Politics and Political Thought at Rome 59-44 B.C.. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963.
This book is extremely hard to find. The NY Public Library has one deep underground and, if I remember correctly, Yale has a copy as well.
I agree with many above. Primary sources are the best way to go, even for the non-scholar. With a good translation, these books are very interesting. I probably most enjoyed reading:Suetonius. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Trans. J. C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library, 1913‑1914. LacusCurtius. Bill Thayer. .
I should add that this John Dickinson (1894-1952) was Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and not the Founding Father.
My husband is a lot more knowlegable about Roman history than I am, and he loves the Lindsey Davis detective series about Marcus Didius Falco.
Mod
I can join in the recommendations for the First Man in Rome series, particularly the first book, which is the strongest, and will introduce you to a pair of important Roman personalities that you likely have not have heard of: Gaius Marius and Sulla.For non-fiction, I don't really have any recommendations for the entirety of Roman history. Osprey's Essential History of The Punic Wars 264-146 BC is a good introductory text on an important period. Robert Brown's The World of Late Antiquity AD 150-750 is a readable 'long essay' on the transition of the Roman world into the Medieval one.
On a non-reading note, I recommend looking up the podcast "The History of Rome". Very good, and the episodes are individually pretty small, which helps in finding time and paying attention all the way through.
Mod
I read The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found earlier this year, and found it fascinating, but it may not be quite what you're looking for.
I didn't see anybody recommend it, but I really liked Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline.
Give Rubicon by Tom Holland a go. Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Easy reading... Well easier than when I studied Classical History at Uni anyway.Tom Holland has meated history out a little, with very little expense to historical accuracy as far as I could tell.
History is Not Boring
Books mentioned in this topic
Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (other topics)Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (other topics)
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found (other topics)
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (other topics)
The World of Late Antiquity (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Montesquieu (other topics)Lindsey Davis (other topics)
Colleen McCullough (other topics)
Colleen McCullough (other topics)
