Reviews with content warning for Torture - A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

This was an interesting deep dive into how Ancient Romans conceptualized the act of murder, what was and what wasn't a murder, how the state should or could be involved, who counted as even being a person able to be murdered. I think that sometimes the flippant nature (never my favorite thing in true crime or history books) was a bit much, but I appreciated that the asides and jokes were at the expense of the men in power and that Southon spends a lot of time trying to humanize the people who died and were ignored by those in power in Ancient Rome.

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saltypiratewench's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.0

I enjoyed her dry humor and taking the piss out of ancient ideas. She made following the names of all these Romans easier than in other historical audiobooks I've tried. The subject matter was very interesting and I learned a lot of new things. I wish there could have been more about common people, but as she says in the book repeatedly, we don't know enough about them because they weren't important enough to the Romans to write anything about. The stuff at the end about the executions and coliseum and crucifixions was ghastly and so interesting!

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yaboywillyshakes's review

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challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

2.25

While there are a handful of chapters where the author evokes the humanity of ancient murder victims and makes a decent argument about the way that murder is constructed as a concept by societies, her absolute disdain for the topic of Rome makes the first half of the book very hard to read. The later chapters are too full of somewhat childish pop culture references (largely Harry Potter, which also gives me pause for other reasons) to make the book relevant to larger audiences, and I was not impressed with the level of research in the last chapter specifically. It felt like the author was cherry picking information to support her own ends, and it felt very shallow in comparison with the preceding chapters.

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daphreads's review

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4.0

A really interesting, and truly hilarious and entertaining, reflection of the way we view the Roman Empire vs what it really is. An investigation into the socially constructed concepts of life, dignity, and murder, and how the Romans viewed it as opposed to how we do now

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another_dahlia's review

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dark funny informative medium-paced

3.0

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