hoped this would be a "very short introduction" to the history of the Roman Empire, Instead, it was an odd series of commentaries by the author on various topics related to the Roman Empire, There were a few that were interesting, but for the most part I struggled to continue reading and if not reading for a workshop I would have stopped at the first chapter.
Rather than a narrative history, Kelly provides an overview more focused on the meanings of the Roman Empire, for both its contemporaries andst century readers.
هر چقدر sitelink جمهوری روم آموزنده و مفید بود این کتاب اتلاف وقت مطلق بود. Less of an introduction than a collection of superficial essays, Roman Empire is one of the most iconic, powerful, and influential empires in history, Its immediate influence on the course of European and Mediterranean history is self evident, but its the influence that it exerts on the politics and culture to this day that makes it remarkable, and almost unique, in the World history.
This short introduction is in a way a companion to the Roman Republic volume in this OUP series, Unlike that book, this one is decidedly less chronological in its treatment, It focuses more on certain themes that have been prevalent throughout the course of Roman Empire the overwhelming and brutal power of the state, the rise of Christianity, the Gladiatorial games, the life in the Roman world, etc.
In that regard this is not your typical history book, This approach has certain virtues, and after reading this book I am certainly appreciating certain aspects of the Roman Empire more than I did before, For instance, the sheer scale of the battle violence that the Roman troops engaged in was something entirely new to me, The number of battle deaths was not again “achieved” until the World War I, This is remarkable since, unlike WWI, the deaths in these battles were all handtohand combat with “cold” weapons,
In the end, however, I feel that this “disjointed” approach to the historical narrative leaves the reader without the sense for the “big picture.
” Many of the trends that this book covers did not develop irrespective of each other, but were rather intertwined in myriad ways, And this is something that only a chronologically written book can fully account for,
I agree with some of who have criticized this book for sometimes seeming like a collection of disparate essays but since I enjoyed each different approach to the Empire I gave it a high mark.
This Very Short Introduction gives a nice summary of what the Roman Empire entailed, It definitely is not an introductory history of the Empire, though references to Virgil, Caesar, Augustus, Nero and the other famous emperors are scattered throughout the narrative.
What Kelly has done instead is to concentrate on the period from roughlyBC to AD, when the empire was, in his words, "at the peak of its prosperity".
I found it somewhat uneven four for good information in most of the chapters, while a couple seemed like they could have been left out without much loss.
The The Roman Empire's first three chapters describe interesting and crucial aspects of the empire during this period, In these Kelly explains what it was like for the peoples scattered around the Mediterranean to become conquered by Rome not so bad after the initial bloodletting, except for Carthage how the cult of the Godemperors was manifested in the empire and how the Romans allowed the prosperous and powerful social leaders of each conquered area to continue local governing.
Chapteris called History Wars, and explains Hadrian's machinations aroundAD to reconstitute the history of ancient Greece, as if Athens in particular had always existed as sort of a preRoman Rome, having the same values embraced by the Empire hundreds of years later.
He contrasts Hadrian's building of Roman temples in the important Greek cities especially the Olympieion in Athens with the writings of Plutarch contemporaneous with Hadrian and Pausanias a generation later, both of whom presented their ideas of the true history and values of ancient Athens without any reference to contemporary Roman ideals.
This whole story was somewhat interesting, but frankly I didn't understand why it was there maybe my own shortcoming,
In chapter, Christians to the Lions, Kelly uses the early Christian martyrs as the story line for his narrative of the bloodthirsty gladiatorial games which were so much a part of the Empire in these centuries.
The topic of the Empire's main leisuretime "sport", in which all strata of society were allowed, even expected, to enjoy the public killing of thousands of animals and human beings, certainly deserves the attention that Kelly gives it.
But in framing the story around the Christian victims, who were only a small part of the carnage, and in spending much of the second half of the chapter veering off into a history of the survival and growth of the Church, culminating in the acceptance of the Christian faith by Constantine inAD, Kelly loses his way I think.
This is a side story to the Roman Empire, whereas the blood sport in the arena was not,
Chapter, Living and Dying, is a very good overview of the demographics, life expectancy, general health, and diet of the people of the Empire.
I felt this was a very useful topic,
Finally, chapter, Rome Revisited, is sort of an odd look at three views of Rome which have pertained in the modern world the view by British academics in the early years of the twentieth century that study of the Empire was an important means for learning lessons that could be applied to their own empire the way in which Mussolini attempted to bring back the glory of Rome as a basis for fascist Italy and finally the view of Rome that we have
received from Hollywood for the lastyears or so.
Like chapter, although interesting, this kind of seemed like filler,
. .
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H. Lawrence and Italy This book was a brief exploration of some significant aspects of the Roman Empire, It didn't go by chronology but rather by themes, This is a book for people to get an introduction to the Roman Empire without getting into too many details or for people who already have the background but want to remember the more significant aspects without delving into too much detail.
Far from being a very short introduction, this is actually a very short commentary, The author even opens by saying he sees no need for a very short introduction to the Roman Empire, since others have already undertaken similar efforts, and so simply chose to write out his analyses of various features and trends.
In fact it's almost more of a very short series of very, very short commentaries, There may be a time and a place for that, but it's not what i intended to read so i'll go read something else, Frankly i'm more than a little irked that the VSI series bothered to print something so selfconsciously contrary to its intended purpose and title we have a term for that: False Advertising.
As such, i'm giving itstar, I may one day reread it and change my mind, based on what it is rather than what it claimed to be, but for now i'm disappointed and more than a little pissed off at the deception.
If you don't expect a chronological history of the Roman Empire, this book is an excellent introduction to the subject, The author describes how the Romans became the most powerful Empire in history and how their daily lives differed from ours, Most of the book is centered around the centuriesBC toAD so it does not really cover the emergence of the Empire or the decline in detail.
This is one of the best books written in the series "Very Short Introductions", For the lay author, such as me, who doesn't know much about western history and who has an interest in knowing about the preChristian imperial Roman society, culture and ideology, this is one of the best books available.
It describes the harsh bloodshed and conquest and the roman world view of their mission, After that, the structure of local society, that is a form of elite oligarchy is described where the wealthy local citizens of a conquered province supported the Roman rule to maintain their wealth and social position and often got Roman citizenship.
Then it goes on to describe the view of a great civilization that was conquered, namely Greece, I, e. how they adjusted to imperialism and their reaction, The next chapter describes the origins of Christianity and the Roman response to the movement, Christians were punished along with other criminals by being slaughtered either by the gladiators or fed to the lions, while the people watched in glee, Christians faced accusations of cannibalism and had a suicidal tendency which made them prone to die, in view of their afterlife philosophy, The subsequent "martydom" quickly gained new converts to the religion and the cycle continued, It also describes the dependence of the early Christian dependence on the book, Due to this, when an emperor recognized that to wipe out the problem, he began seizing books from the churches, the community described it as the last "great persecution" despite no people being killed, as contrasted with the period before.
Finally, after Christianity gained many new converts and became a powerful political community, emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and convened the Nicea council in which Nicene creed was declared.
The next chapter deals with statistics such as nutrition, infant mortality, life expectancy, etc, The last chapter describes the portrayal of Roman empire in popular media, especially films and also deals with the interest of the British to study the empire for a study of successful imperialism and colonialism, which they thought would help consolidate their rule in India.
Such an introduction serves to familiarize the reader with Roman society in order to better understand the ancient Stoic philosophers such as Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,etc.
A better short introduction on this topic in my view, would not have been possible, .