![]() ![]() His absorbing, witty narrative captures the scope and drama of the republic and shapes its labyrinthine elements into a single continuum.Ĭharacter is Holland's principal focus. Holland's rich analysis begins at this point. Rome was the first republic to become an empire the second, of course, is the United States.Īncient historians Sallust and Livy believed that the moral decline of Rome began in the second century B.C. In Rome citizens had free speech, private property and rights before the law. ![]() Rome was the last free city left in the ancient world. Rome is the mother lode of Western societal and political attributes: stern, persevering, patrician, moralistic, materialistic, hypocritical, with reverence for the past and deep-rooted divisions of class and status. Why read about Rome? Rome intrigues us because it mirrors our own society. With this cinematic opening, British historian and novelist Tom Holland begins his splendid history of roughly the last century of the Roman Republic, leading to its end at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. "So fateful was Caesar's crossing that the Rubicon stands for every fateful step taken since." ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |