My dog greatly enjoyed this book. I came upstairs to discover she'd eaten the cover.
[image]
Here's a photo of the villain caught unrepentant itl;dr
My dog greatly enjoyed this book. I came upstairs to discover she'd eaten the cover.
[image]
Here's a photo of the villain caught unrepentant in the act of her latest villainy: luring two unsuspecting children to certain doom. What a monster.
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When your historical references about an event are either biased, tangential, or removed by 100 years or more, the task of assembling a convincing work on the subject will prove challenging. Nevertheless, Strauss paints a compelling picture of the world at the time and builds a sensible timeline of events based on what we do know, inferences about what we know of the social environment of the Roman world, the character of those involved in the revolt, both Roman and "barbarian", and does excellent work setting the scenes for the plot to develop.
As with these low direct-reference works, the author relies upon limited digression to describe what we do know. And that, to my mind, is great. Putting flesh on the plot saves me a fabulous amount of time looking things up on Wikipedia or elsewhere. "Often books speak of books," according to Umberto Eco, and it's nice when we don't necessarily have to read all of them to pick up the threads of conversation.
On the other hand, the paucity of certainty sometimes proved frustrating. This is no fault of the author--unless we expect him to imagine events rather than speculate. As a result, the book was very circumlocutive. You never witnessed a battle, but you could see one army or the other march past on its way to the fight. You knew the rebels through the behavior of the Romans. Imagine trying to determine what was going on on the other side of a lake by watching the ripples on your side. The book could be this way.
As a consequence, The Spartacus War is comparatively short at just over 200 pages (there are many additional reading/comments on sources pages that pad this number), and it fills them well, but we never get to know Spartacus as we might like, we only get to view his shadow. This is probably why Strauss calls his book The Spartacus War rather than Spartacus: The Authorized Biography. To do otherwise would be disingenuous.
Strauss makes frequent reference to contemporary city names, which makes sense if one wants to look at a contemporary map to get a sense of where events occurred. He even mentions the location of events with reference to an existing highway, as though he's talking to you while stopped at the roadside as part of a travel tour. He paints images of locations in detail, allowing the reader to see the world as though standing in the hills and valleys where Spartacus and Crassus walked. This should come as no surprise because Strauss has himself already done so, as evinced by the attribution of several photos of Italian historical locations to himself.
In the end, the end is rather anticlimactic and inevitable, as history often proves to be. Spoilers: the Titanic sinks, the Cubs lose, Spartacus dies, the rebellion fails. M. Night Shyamalan did not write this, so there's no surprise, twist ending. Neither did J.J. Abrams and Friends, so there aren't 10,000 unresolved storylines either. In fact, Strauss tells us the end was likely dramatically uneventful. And that's somehow very satisfying. Not everything must end in a supernova. Some stars simply sputter out. The tragedy isn't in the glory of Spartacus' death, but of his almost success. The longer he stayed in Italy, as Strauss asserts, the more inevitable this end became. All that remained is what might have been, the Roman efforts to quash it in such a way that it never happened again, and the exploitation of events by the victors. That's not the happy ending we want, but it's the truth. Honesty is more healthy for us anyway.
It isn't really until after the climax that we get our first surprising tidbit, and that is the possible cause of Spartacus' legend. Romans and their people, as no doubt were many others then and now, were religious and superstitious. They erected temples and monuments to everything, turned most anything into a relic, and notably created a demigod out of a politician responsible for currency reform. So it was with Spartacus and his followers--a large number of which made themselves ripe for the reliquary being strung out on crosses for some 100+ miles between Rome and Capua.
In that respect Rome did themselves a disservice. Never again did the slaves rise in revolt, as was the intent. But the legend of Spartacus, whose specter turned up again and again as a warning in later Roman writing (just as Hitler does now any time someone wants to complain about X Politician on the internet), never lost its menace. And when Rome itself faded away, the legend of the gladiator who rose up against a budding empire remained.
This is a good history, given what Strauss had to work with. But if you want a great one, in terms of both writing and literary value, read Peter Green's Alexander of Macedon....more
Name-dropping, ghostwritten memoir of self-proclaimed average guy, Emperor Hadrian, nevertheless stuffed with useful anecdotes and aphorisms pertaininName-dropping, ghostwritten memoir of self-proclaimed average guy, Emperor Hadrian, nevertheless stuffed with useful anecdotes and aphorisms pertaining to power, human nature, etc. Purportedly addressed to fellow normal guy/Emperor-to-be, Marcus Aurelius.
Breezy and brisk, Tom Holland tells the story of the early Roman Republic and the counterintuitive yet inevitable transition to a monarchy in a style Breezy and brisk, Tom Holland tells the story of the early Roman Republic and the counterintuitive yet inevitable transition to a monarchy in a style that is very easy to read. The Roman Republic was founded upon an abhorrence of kings, making the presumption that Rome was destined to be ruled by emperors somewhat hard to swallow. Holland, however, makes the case for Roman personal ambition and competetiveness as major motivators for kingship, and also highlights a variety of additional interesting oxymorons built into Roman dogma.
The speed with which the reader is whooshed through the narrative makes one worry how thorough a history can be without being stodgy and meticulous. Carthage, the Punic Wars, and Hannibal receive perhaps two pages. One gets the impression as they read this book that they are zipping through an art museum on a roller coaster.
Gladly, the details Holland chooses are chosen very well, which makes his accelerated style very functional. They are concise and illuminating and well crafted, and they make it possible to describe the Carthaginian wars effectively.
The Roman attitude is the primary theme, with all its perks and pitfalls. For example, Romans regarded their city with pride and arrogance, yet Holland (and others) compare it unfavorably to other cities of its day in terms of layout, consistency, and architectural beauty. The anathema of long-term despotic rule does have its advantages, as Holland indicates, allowing long-term architectural projects and metropolitan organization, compared to 1-year consular rule that prevented extensive plans of action, resulting in a Rome that was, in short, a haphazard dump in which it was easy to get lost. Romans likewise cherished the illusion of public opinion swaying the direction of their city and nation, when in truth the ruling class held sway more and more as years passed, as the Republic gradually metamorphosed into a plutocracy.
Because this period of Roman history has been covered to great extent, it's difficult to question the veracity of historical fact Holland presents--he offers up seven pages of source material in defense of his writings. Holland has degrees in English and Latin, not history, and may take a bit of creative license with the figures in his book, but he doesn't spend much time on anyone without a significant amount of contemporary writing done about them, and it's easy to infer what sort of men Julius and Augustus Caesar, Pompey, Sulla, Cicero, and others were through their actions, and because they constantly wrote about themselves or had someone else do it for them (though they may have elaborated somewhat upon their histories--it's plausible that Julius Caesar was not, in fact, a god). While the opinions and feelings he projects upon the characters may or may not be true, the circumstances certainly were, and Holland uses his Roman Thesis to calculate them appropriately.
In the end, Holland covers ground similar to that which Plutarch covers with the latter, Roman portion of his Lives, but with more energy and a great deal of circumspection about the nature of Roman society, with the aforementioned disdain for an inevitable monarchy at the forefront, and how successive personalities laid the path for Emperors.
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