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samarium's review
3.0
I doubt I read this edition - I read a free version I downloaded onto an app on my phone, which obviously affected my experience (there were a handful of images that didn't show up).
This is an interesting book. It provides a lot of interesting information on how Rome's economy worked and introduced me to Caelius, which is cool. There were elements of philosophy I vaguely recognised, but this was okay as an introduction.
There were a couple elements I didn't like which were probably mostly down to the age of the book - there was essentially this blanket assumption that this was the 'bad period' before Augustus 'made everything amazing', an interpretation I don't necessarily agree with. There was also extensive amounts of seeing Christianity of the only way to treat people with respect, and a general blanket idea of assessing the 'character' of a people which I feel is very outdated (obviously, the book is, but this is just sort of a warning to not take it at face value).
The final issue this that this book was written at a time where people who studied Classics had basically been studying Latin for half of their life - as a Classics/Ancient History student with no experience of Latin in the modern day, the Latin quotations the author frequently referred to meant absolutely nothing to me.
Overall, though, this book was pretty interesting. It certainly provides a good introduction to many things in Rome not covered at all by the standard Plutarch, Sallust, etc. that I read for my lessons. I also appreciated the references to the Aeneid (though I imagine there are sections of this book that would make no sense if you hadn't read said epic).
This is an interesting book. It provides a lot of interesting information on how Rome's economy worked and introduced me to Caelius, which is cool. There were elements of philosophy I vaguely recognised, but this was okay as an introduction.
There were a couple elements I didn't like which were probably mostly down to the age of the book - there was essentially this blanket assumption that this was the 'bad period' before Augustus 'made everything amazing', an interpretation I don't necessarily agree with. There was also extensive amounts of seeing Christianity of the only way to treat people with respect, and a general blanket idea of assessing the 'character' of a people which I feel is very outdated (obviously, the book is, but this is just sort of a warning to not take it at face value).
The final issue this that this book was written at a time where people who studied Classics had basically been studying Latin for half of their life - as a Classics/Ancient History student with no experience of Latin in the modern day, the Latin quotations the author frequently referred to meant absolutely nothing to me.
Overall, though, this book was pretty interesting. It certainly provides a good introduction to many things in Rome not covered at all by the standard Plutarch, Sallust, etc. that I read for my lessons. I also appreciated the references to the Aeneid (though I imagine there are sections of this book that would make no sense if you hadn't read said epic).
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