A Short History of Ancient Rome by Pascal Hughes

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Most people know bits and pieces of Roman history, some more accurate than others.  Hughes has assembled an interesting and entertaining book for those who want to hit the high spots, so to speak.  He follows a timeline of Roman history in short chapters, many less than twenty pages, to give readers facts and character sketches of most of the important names. 

This book is based on the popular “Short History” podcast.  Chapters tend to open with a brief fictionalized “you are there” scenario involving the chapter’s subject before launching into the fact-filled portion. Starting with the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus, the book continues through the coming of Attila the Hun, which is a lot of history to cover.  Needless to say, a lot of people and incidents are skipped in order to cover those parts of Roman history deemed most important: the assassination of Caesar, building of the Colosseum, Pompeii, Constantine, etc. but I have to say that the book does manage to include a wealth of information.

I was impressed with the general even-handedness of the treatment. For example, the popular image of the Emperor Nero is the man who fiddled while Rome burned.  The book does note that the claim that the Emperor was playing a lyre while the flames danced, but also mentions other accounts that has Nero providing food to the displaced populace.  Other historical figures are accorded the same reasonable doubt.

One of my favorite things is the graphic used in front of each chapter:  a Roman-style column with a timeline of events and an indication where along the timeline each chapter falls.  This includes some events that may not be fully covered in a particular chapter at a time, but will be described later as the repercussions become clear.  It’s an excellent way to keep track of some things.

This leads to my major gripe: the lack of an index.  Some figures show up only as part of a chapter on someone else, while other events are summarized later than they actually occurred.  I would love to have been able to go back and track some of these.

Overall, I do give the book high marks.  It’s very readable, despite having a lot of names and places thrown at the reader all at once, and the short, easily digestible chapters keep the pages turning.  If someone asked me for a good overview of the Roman Empire, this is the first book I’d suggest.