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alexrobinsonsupergenius's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Slavery, Death, Murder, Rape, War, Animal cruelty, Incest, and Animal death
rosemaryandrue's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Many people can name an emperor of the Roman Empire even more than two thousand years after they lived, and are familiar with the stories of the excesses of their power. But what did being emperor actually entail?
In this book, historian Mary Beard argues that being emperor in many ways meant playing the part of ’emperor,’ in the way that the Roman people saw them – the person who wore the garment being sometimes interchangeable. It was an interesting thesis that really pointed out how different politics in Rome were, though as I read I noticed plenty of parallels to more recent history.
I thought the author did a good job of taking us into the alien past and showing us quite how alien it was. Her Rome is a slave society full of double-thinking and whole-hearted lip service to self-professed ideals, where an emperor is both all-powerful as well as a common man like any other. I liked how the book was not organized chronologically but instead by aspect of being emperor, so bridging the gap between different regimes and allowing us to see how things evolved and things stayed the same.
However, I wish that the book had been a little longer. This is popular history, not an academic study, and the author has a lot of ground to cover, but unfortunately this means she skims past some stories and ideas that could have been explored further. I also found the writing a little dry on occasion, and it was hard to keep track of the emperors and what they did sometimes because of their out-of-order treatment. The nature of being emperor means that they are supposed to blend into each other sometimes, but without much knowledge about some of these men, they blended confusingly at times.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery
Minor: Murder, War, and Suicide
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