Status Updates From A Fatal Thing Happened on t...

Ugh! Reliving how much I deeply hate Agrippina the Younger 🙃

“As the excellent Gretchen Weiners once said, ‘Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, right? Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar, and when did it become OK for one person to be the boss of everybody because that’s not what Rome is about!”

To say I’m loving this book is an understatement!

“And that was the end of ‘Cicero and Clodius: Best Friends Forever’.”

“I mean that senators took to stabbing the hell out of each other with disturbing frequency for almost a century – very frequently in the centre of the city.”

“And thus, in murder, Rome was founded.”

This is fascinating. But it would be improved if the author wasn't overwhelmly ignorant about modern Era capitalism and racism. Her mind is lost in white colonizer thought. Either only talk abt Murder bce or learn abt modern comparisons because there are brunch. But whiteness clouds it all for the author.

Went to Rome and all I got was this wonderfuly entertaining book!

"...the people of Rome were actually quite keen on Gaius and were not fans of presumptuous senators and magistrates making unilateral decisions about the nature of Roman government with swords. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, they believed, not from some farcical bloody murder. Strange men in corridors distributing stab wounds was no basis for a system of government."

The section on gladiator fights has been very enlightening. Interesting to think that some things haven’t changed in 2000 years

The classically educated part of me is so excited about this book. Only a couple pages in but I already love the writer because the narrative doesn’t feel like a text book droning on. All the Roman history is rushing back.

I’m having SUCH a good time with this book! Between this and Maria Dahvana Headley’s recent translation of Beowulf, I definitely want more modern women writing snarky books about old timey lit/history.

I’m only 8 pages in and loving this book. Calling Julius Caesar ‘JC’ is just really funny to me.

barely 5 pages in and this is already my new favorite true crime and/or history book.

“The Roman state ran on the labour of enslaved men doing the administrative and physical labour necessary to run a huge empire and build massive fuck-off marble buildings covered in pretty paintings every four hundred yards.”

I'm loving it so far but I will not remember any of these names in 2 days 💀

"It's tough to make yourself the victim of someone else's alleged murder, but Marcus managed to do it."

#yesall(roman)men

Constantes juicios de valor, anacronismos, presentismos y una tremenda desconsideración al lector no anglófono poniendo como ejemplos a personajes famosos americanos e ingleses, a pesar de saber que después de que su anterior libro fue traducido a varios idiomas, este también lo seria, y de los cuales no tenemos noticia en nuestro país.

Constantes juicios de valor, anacronismos, presentismos y una tremenda desconsideración al lector no anglófono poniendo como ejemplos a personajes famosos americanos e ingleses, a pesar de saber que después de que su anterior libro fue traducido a varios idiomas, este también lo seria, y de los cuales no tenemos noticia en nuestro país.

FINISHING THIS BOOK TM OR I WILL SCREAM

rome really was just fucking horrifying huh

okaaaaay i’m going to need a tad bit more narrative structure going forward but it is interesting i will say that

i really loved the narrative parts of this book but when it gets to the legal shit its tough to pay attention,,, probably why i'm not a lawyer

woah so interesting.... do i like nonfiction now? am i a pick me girl????

Irreverent and entertaining dive into how ancient Rome viewed murder. How can you not enjoy something like “It is almost ten thousand words of character assassination. It’s almost as bad as YA reviewers on GoodReads.”

Very repetitious. Reads like a masters thesis to me.

roman senators were better entertainment than reality tv i bet

This remains a fun read but with a lot of irritants like our PhD author clearly not knowing who the hell Agrippa Postumus is and not bothering to look it up. There's a reason she works in a bookstore and doesn't have an academic position.

The tone of this book is very pop-history, but the author has a doctorate and presumably knows what she's talking about, so I assume the tone was a publishing mandate.

Full confession: a year ago I flung Southon's book on Agrippina onto the "back to the library" pile after a couple paragraphs. When I realized I'd brought home a book by the same author I almost did the same thing without even opening it. Glad I didn't. Suppose I'll have to go back and get the one on Agrippina now...

I have no idea what page I’m on (reading an ebook), but somewhere in Part 2, about the Twelve Tables. I love this book so far. Years of studying classics, and I never encountered anything that made this complicated history as clear as this book.

Goodreads keeps recommending me weird shit and I fucking fall for it