Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Great book, great price, 29 Sep 2008
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue., 11 Jul 2008
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Great book, great price, 29 Sep 2008
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue., 11 Jul 2008
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

The Private Lives of Rome's Good and Bad Rulers, 17 Jun 2008
The Twelve Caesars was the first ancient book I ever read. Before then I had only known Classical history from the books written by modern day historians. In the intervening years I have read many other primary sources from this period, but Suetonius's work still stands as the richest and most readable look on Rome's Emperors.

Suetonius recounts the successes and failures as well as the private lives of the first twelve rulers of Rome after the fall of the Republic . He begins with Julius Caesar, then discusses Augustus at length before covering Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

What makes the book a joy to read are the inclusion of many fascinating anecdotes - many of them are highly amusing, disgusting, bizarre or funny.
He tells us about Caesar's embarassment about his baldhead, Claudius's mocked fight with a giant whale at the port of Ostia, Augustus's love of having the hairs on his legs flattened by warm walnuts and Caligula's ban on the mention of goats in his presence. These descriptions help bring the old emperors to life - You'll never see them in the same light the next time you see a solemn bust of Galba or Domitian at a museum.

Suetonius has often been considered an unreliable witness by many historians, but Michael Grant discusses the veracity of his work at the beginning of the book, showing us that the old court historian was much more reliable and less biased than many would suppose.

Robert Graves's translation is wonderful. The text is lucid and very readable. Graves would go on to use the information gained from this work to write his seminal novels 'I, Claudius' and 'Claudius the God', which were made into a highly acclaimed series in 1976.

The book also contains genealogical tables, maps, a discussion on coin portraits, a glossary of unfamiliar Roman terms, a Chronological table of the reigns of the emperors, a Key to place names (ancient and modern), a further reading list, and an index.

This is a must have for anyone interested in the early history of the Roman Empire, or anyone who loves Classical civilisation.

Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Great book, great price, 29 Sep 2008
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue., 11 Jul 2008
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

The Private Lives of Rome's Good and Bad Rulers, 17 Jun 2008
The Twelve Caesars was the first ancient book I ever read. Before then I had only known Classical history from the books written by modern day historians. In the intervening years I have read many other primary sources from this period, but Suetonius's work still stands as the richest and most readable look on Rome's Emperors.

Suetonius recounts the successes and failures as well as the private lives of the first twelve rulers of Rome after the fall of the Republic . He begins with Julius Caesar, then discusses Augustus at length before covering Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

What makes the book a joy to read are the inclusion of many fascinating anecdotes - many of them are highly amusing, disgusting, bizarre or funny.
He tells us about Caesar's embarassment about his baldhead, Claudius's mocked fight with a giant whale at the port of Ostia, Augustus's love of having the hairs on his legs flattened by warm walnuts and Caligula's ban on the mention of goats in his presence. These descriptions help bring the old emperors to life - You'll never see them in the same light the next time you see a solemn bust of Galba or Domitian at a museum.

Suetonius has often been considered an unreliable witness by many historians, but Michael Grant discusses the veracity of his work at the beginning of the book, showing us that the old court historian was much more reliable and less biased than many would suppose.

Robert Graves's translation is wonderful. The text is lucid and very readable. Graves would go on to use the information gained from this work to write his seminal novels 'I, Claudius' and 'Claudius the God', which were made into a highly acclaimed series in 1976.

The book also contains genealogical tables, maps, a discussion on coin portraits, a glossary of unfamiliar Roman terms, a Chronological table of the reigns of the emperors, a Key to place names (ancient and modern), a further reading list, and an index.

This is a must have for anyone interested in the early history of the Roman Empire, or anyone who loves Classical civilisation.

A Biography of One of the 'Great' Men of History, 09 May 2008
This is a big book in volume as well as content being over 500 pages long but Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has contrived to make it interesting for the reader from beginning to end. Many facts have been written about Alexander over the years, some true, some doubtful and much that is pure speculation. This in turn has given Alexander a mythical quality, bordering on god like proportions.

The author's writing style is both concise and lucid with no pretensions to the fact that he is the master and the reader by his very nature is the pupil. In a nutshell the author writes for everyone not just the scholar. This book is for anyone with an interest in the life and times of Alexander. The author progresses through the life of Alexander putting a little more meat on the bones with every passing phase of Alexander's relatively short life.

This is a book for everyone. For those who have found it difficult, or even impossible in the past to read and I mean read a history book from start to finish, rather than just go cherry picking facts from the numerous pages, then this is a good book to get your teeth into. It can be read almost like a novel, but is far more interesting than any fictional book.

Essentail reading for "Advanced" Alexanders, 14 Apr 2008
This is "the" book for those wishing to get to grips with every detail. But I have to echo the drawbacks from previous reviewers: detailed, complex English in places, and very poor maps by today's standars: even the new 2004 edition is a essentailly a reprint from the 1970's.
Beginners would be far better off with Michael Wood's "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great"; then read the original ancient sources; then this.

Magnificent, 25 Oct 2007
What boy hasn't imagined being Alexander the Great? Conquering one of the largest empires ever by the age of 32, the man has been stamped indelibly upon our collective memory as one of the greatest warriors ever. That he was for sure, but much more besides as well.

This very detailed biography delves into all aspects of Alexander, and it's evident on every page and in every sentence that Robin Lane Fox has studied his subject extremely well. Couple that with Fox's easy style and what you get is a real page-turner. Learned and yet accessible, what more could one expect from a history book? Extremely well done!

Humanising the myth, 06 Sep 2006
Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has written a superb biography of one of history's most mythologised characters.

Fox never patronises his audience with his writing style but neither does he make any assumptions that the reader is pre-armed with a firm grasp of classical history. He clearly explains where he gets his sources from, who he trusts, if there are conflicting accounts and where his judgements lie.

The book relates an epic story and Fox tells it in great detail; normally, the more detail a book provides, the better but in this particular case, the book loses one star in its rating because Fox's sentences can run to great lengths and become rather muddy (I'd give it four and a half if I could). Don't let that put you off buying this book, though, as it animates quite successfully Alexander's life and times, the politics and the geography. This book is especially recommended to those of you who have Oliver Stone's film, Alexander Revisited, to which Robin Lane Fox was an advisor.

Alexander The Great - Highly Recommended, 15 Aug 2004
I have not studied Classics and I had never read a biography of Alexander before but I could not put this book down. It was detailed and inspiring and I will be buying copies for friends. It is more than a biography, it is a tale of true adventure, war, bravery and leadership. I felt the author helped me, the reader, live in the times of Alexander. At the same time he reminded me that I was reading a historical chronical that was based on pieces of information that had been passed down or preserved. He distinguished between educated assumptions and facts, so I trusted him as an historian. The adventure and times as depicted in the book are thrilling and I recommend it highly.

Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Great book, great price, 29 Sep 2008
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue., 11 Jul 2008
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

The Private Lives of Rome's Good and Bad Rulers, 17 Jun 2008
The Twelve Caesars was the first ancient book I ever read. Before then I had only known Classical history from the books written by modern day historians. In the intervening years I have read many other primary sources from this period, but Suetonius's work still stands as the richest and most readable look on Rome's Emperors.

Suetonius recounts the successes and failures as well as the private lives of the first twelve rulers of Rome after the fall of the Republic . He begins with Julius Caesar, then discusses Augustus at length before covering Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

What makes the book a joy to read are the inclusion of many fascinating anecdotes - many of them are highly amusing, disgusting, bizarre or funny.
He tells us about Caesar's embarassment about his baldhead, Claudius's mocked fight with a giant whale at the port of Ostia, Augustus's love of having the hairs on his legs flattened by warm walnuts and Caligula's ban on the mention of goats in his presence. These descriptions help bring the old emperors to life - You'll never see them in the same light the next time you see a solemn bust of Galba or Domitian at a museum.

Suetonius has often been considered an unreliable witness by many historians, but Michael Grant discusses the veracity of his work at the beginning of the book, showing us that the old court historian was much more reliable and less biased than many would suppose.

Robert Graves's translation is wonderful. The text is lucid and very readable. Graves would go on to use the information gained from this work to write his seminal novels 'I, Claudius' and 'Claudius the God', which were made into a highly acclaimed series in 1976.

The book also contains genealogical tables, maps, a discussion on coin portraits, a glossary of unfamiliar Roman terms, a Chronological table of the reigns of the emperors, a Key to place names (ancient and modern), a further reading list, and an index.

This is a must have for anyone interested in the early history of the Roman Empire, or anyone who loves Classical civilisation.

A Biography of One of the 'Great' Men of History, 09 May 2008
This is a big book in volume as well as content being over 500 pages long but Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has contrived to make it interesting for the reader from beginning to end. Many facts have been written about Alexander over the years, some true, some doubtful and much that is pure speculation. This in turn has given Alexander a mythical quality, bordering on god like proportions.

The author's writing style is both concise and lucid with no pretensions to the fact that he is the master and the reader by his very nature is the pupil. In a nutshell the author writes for everyone not just the scholar. This book is for anyone with an interest in the life and times of Alexander. The author progresses through the life of Alexander putting a little more meat on the bones with every passing phase of Alexander's relatively short life.

This is a book for everyone. For those who have found it difficult, or even impossible in the past to read and I mean read a history book from start to finish, rather than just go cherry picking facts from the numerous pages, then this is a good book to get your teeth into. It can be read almost like a novel, but is far more interesting than any fictional book.

Essentail reading for "Advanced" Alexanders, 14 Apr 2008
This is "the" book for those wishing to get to grips with every detail. But I have to echo the drawbacks from previous reviewers: detailed, complex English in places, and very poor maps by today's standars: even the new 2004 edition is a essentailly a reprint from the 1970's.
Beginners would be far better off with Michael Wood's "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great"; then read the original ancient sources; then this.

Magnificent, 25 Oct 2007
What boy hasn't imagined being Alexander the Great? Conquering one of the largest empires ever by the age of 32, the man has been stamped indelibly upon our collective memory as one of the greatest warriors ever. That he was for sure, but much more besides as well.

This very detailed biography delves into all aspects of Alexander, and it's evident on every page and in every sentence that Robin Lane Fox has studied his subject extremely well. Couple that with Fox's easy style and what you get is a real page-turner. Learned and yet accessible, what more could one expect from a history book? Extremely well done!

Humanising the myth, 06 Sep 2006
Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has written a superb biography of one of history's most mythologised characters.

Fox never patronises his audience with his writing style but neither does he make any assumptions that the reader is pre-armed with a firm grasp of classical history. He clearly explains where he gets his sources from, who he trusts, if there are conflicting accounts and where his judgements lie.

The book relates an epic story and Fox tells it in great detail; normally, the more detail a book provides, the better but in this particular case, the book loses one star in its rating because Fox's sentences can run to great lengths and become rather muddy (I'd give it four and a half if I could). Don't let that put you off buying this book, though, as it animates quite successfully Alexander's life and times, the politics and the geography. This book is especially recommended to those of you who have Oliver Stone's film, Alexander Revisited, to which Robin Lane Fox was an advisor.

Alexander The Great - Highly Recommended, 15 Aug 2004
I have not studied Classics and I had never read a biography of Alexander before but I could not put this book down. It was detailed and inspiring and I will be buying copies for friends. It is more than a biography, it is a tale of true adventure, war, bravery and leadership. I felt the author helped me, the reader, live in the times of Alexander. At the same time he reminded me that I was reading a historical chronical that was based on pieces of information that had been passed down or preserved. He distinguished between educated assumptions and facts, so I trusted him as an historian. The adventure and times as depicted in the book are thrilling and I recommend it highly.

good craft no creativity, 23 Oct 2008
Praise for the other works of this author induced me to buy this book. Caesar here does not come across as a colossus, but as a busy man moving from A to B, sometimes willy-nilly. Generally sympathetic to his hero, Goldsworthy demonstates knowledge of the basic primary sources without showing major reflective/critical powers. That is to say, I was disappointed by a lack of originality or any point researched in depth (like, for example, Hankel's work on Caesar's genius for far-reaching economic measures or Dodge's meticulous analysis of Caesar's military exploits, not to mention Brandes' evaluation of his personal/historical merits). It is a fair retelling of Caesar's life - no more.

Good text book, bad read, 03 Aug 2008
It's a very detailed account of Caesar's life, if you're into that. If you think this is a book that will suck you in like a Robert Fisk book then you're in for a surprise. I've gotten 250 pages in and I'm about ready to hang myself.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can write books which are not interesting, and manage to get away with it.

Compelling, 11 Jan 2008
I have read a number of books about Julius Caesar, the first being Boney Fuller's work in the 1970s, but this may be the last as it was certainly the best. Goldsworthy's clear writing style runs logically and throughly through Caesar's life. (Unlike the work of Fuller, and others, this book is no thematic cesspool!) It illuminates Caesar's failings and qualities, especially his ability to conquer by blending ruthless force with pragmatic politics and his great skill in resonating through the layers of Roman society. Compelling!

The tale of the greatest man of any age told by the greatest historian of the modern age!, 03 Jan 2008
Frankly, I don't think that any historian can rival Adrian Goldsworthy in his extraodinary mix of scholarship and verve.

This is a majestic biography of Caesar's life, involving all of the aspects of the life of the man who broke the Roman Republic: politician, general and human.

Adrian Goldsworthy has a rare talent for balancing a simple text with wonderful intelligence, whereas Christian Meier clearly has the intelligence, but manages to hide it behind an impenetrable text. You really feel like you're dealing with a man who knows his stuff and has vigorously researched his material, unlike - as a previous reviewer said - Tom Holland, whose narrative reads more like a novel than a piece of historical writing.

I have read all of Goldsworthy's books and I would advise anybody interested in the topics of ancient or military history to do the same.

(Also looking forward to his next book 'How Rome Fell').

Perfect, 19 Sep 2007
You would be hard pushed to find a better book on this subject, the author does an excellent job in writing this book. I have read another book by this author and that is just as good. A recomended read.

Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Great book, great price, 29 Sep 2008
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue., 11 Jul 2008
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

The Private Lives of Rome's Good and Bad Rulers, 17 Jun 2008
The Twelve Caesars was the first ancient book I ever read. Before then I had only known Classical history from the books written by modern day historians. In the intervening years I have read many other primary sources from this period, but Suetonius's work still stands as the richest and most readable look on Rome's Emperors.

Suetonius recounts the successes and failures as well as the private lives of the first twelve rulers of Rome after the fall of the Republic . He begins with Julius Caesar, then discusses Augustus at length before covering Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

What makes the book a joy to read are the inclusion of many fascinating anecdotes - many of them are highly amusing, disgusting, bizarre or funny.
He tells us about Caesar's embarassment about his baldhead, Claudius's mocked fight with a giant whale at the port of Ostia, Augustus's love of having the hairs on his legs flattened by warm walnuts and Caligula's ban on the mention of goats in his presence. These descriptions help bring the old emperors to life - You'll never see them in the same light the next time you see a solemn bust of Galba or Domitian at a museum.

Suetonius has often been considered an unreliable witness by many historians, but Michael Grant discusses the veracity of his work at the beginning of the book, showing us that the old court historian was much more reliable and less biased than many would suppose.

Robert Graves's translation is wonderful. The text is lucid and very readable. Graves would go on to use the information gained from this work to write his seminal novels 'I, Claudius' and 'Claudius the God', which were made into a highly acclaimed series in 1976.

The book also contains genealogical tables, maps, a discussion on coin portraits, a glossary of unfamiliar Roman terms, a Chronological table of the reigns of the emperors, a Key to place names (ancient and modern), a further reading list, and an index.

This is a must have for anyone interested in the early history of the Roman Empire, or anyone who loves Classical civilisation.

A Biography of One of the 'Great' Men of History, 09 May 2008
This is a big book in volume as well as content being over 500 pages long but Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has contrived to make it interesting for the reader from beginning to end. Many facts have been written about Alexander over the years, some true, some doubtful and much that is pure speculation. This in turn has given Alexander a mythical quality, bordering on god like proportions.

The author's writing style is both concise and lucid with no pretensions to the fact that he is the master and the reader by his very nature is the pupil. In a nutshell the author writes for everyone not just the scholar. This book is for anyone with an interest in the life and times of Alexander. The author progresses through the life of Alexander putting a little more meat on the bones with every passing phase of Alexander's relatively short life.

This is a book for everyone. For those who have found it difficult, or even impossible in the past to read and I mean read a history book from start to finish, rather than just go cherry picking facts from the numerous pages, then this is a good book to get your teeth into. It can be read almost like a novel, but is far more interesting than any fictional book.

Essentail reading for "Advanced" Alexanders, 14 Apr 2008
This is "the" book for those wishing to get to grips with every detail. But I have to echo the drawbacks from previous reviewers: detailed, complex English in places, and very poor maps by today's standars: even the new 2004 edition is a essentailly a reprint from the 1970's.
Beginners would be far better off with Michael Wood's "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great"; then read the original ancient sources; then this.

Magnificent, 25 Oct 2007
What boy hasn't imagined being Alexander the Great? Conquering one of the largest empires ever by the age of 32, the man has been stamped indelibly upon our collective memory as one of the greatest warriors ever. That he was for sure, but much more besides as well.

This very detailed biography delves into all aspects of Alexander, and it's evident on every page and in every sentence that Robin Lane Fox has studied his subject extremely well. Couple that with Fox's easy style and what you get is a real page-turner. Learned and yet accessible, what more could one expect from a history book? Extremely well done!

Humanising the myth, 06 Sep 2006
Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has written a superb biography of one of history's most mythologised characters.

Fox never patronises his audience with his writing style but neither does he make any assumptions that the reader is pre-armed with a firm grasp of classical history. He clearly explains where he gets his sources from, who he trusts, if there are conflicting accounts and where his judgements lie.

The book relates an epic story and Fox tells it in great detail; normally, the more detail a book provides, the better but in this particular case, the book loses one star in its rating because Fox's sentences can run to great lengths and become rather muddy (I'd give it four and a half if I could). Don't let that put you off buying this book, though, as it animates quite successfully Alexander's life and times, the politics and the geography. This book is especially recommended to those of you who have Oliver Stone's film, Alexander Revisited, to which Robin Lane Fox was an advisor.

Alexander The Great - Highly Recommended, 15 Aug 2004
I have not studied Classics and I had never read a biography of Alexander before but I could not put this book down. It was detailed and inspiring and I will be buying copies for friends. It is more than a biography, it is a tale of true adventure, war, bravery and leadership. I felt the author helped me, the reader, live in the times of Alexander. At the same time he reminded me that I was reading a historical chronical that was based on pieces of information that had been passed down or preserved. He distinguished between educated assumptions and facts, so I trusted him as an historian. The adventure and times as depicted in the book are thrilling and I recommend it highly.

good craft no creativity, 23 Oct 2008
Praise for the other works of this author induced me to buy this book. Caesar here does not come across as a colossus, but as a busy man moving from A to B, sometimes willy-nilly. Generally sympathetic to his hero, Goldsworthy demonstates knowledge of the basic primary sources without showing major reflective/critical powers. That is to say, I was disappointed by a lack of originality or any point researched in depth (like, for example, Hankel's work on Caesar's genius for far-reaching economic measures or Dodge's meticulous analysis of Caesar's military exploits, not to mention Brandes' evaluation of his personal/historical merits). It is a fair retelling of Caesar's life - no more.

Good text book, bad read, 03 Aug 2008
It's a very detailed account of Caesar's life, if you're into that. If you think this is a book that will suck you in like a Robert Fisk book then you're in for a surprise. I've gotten 250 pages in and I'm about ready to hang myself.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can write books which are not interesting, and manage to get away with it.

Compelling, 11 Jan 2008
I have read a number of books about Julius Caesar, the first being Boney Fuller's work in the 1970s, but this may be the last as it was certainly the best. Goldsworthy's clear writing style runs logically and throughly through Caesar's life. (Unlike the work of Fuller, and others, this book is no thematic cesspool!) It illuminates Caesar's failings and qualities, especially his ability to conquer by blending ruthless force with pragmatic politics and his great skill in resonating through the layers of Roman society. Compelling!

The tale of the greatest man of any age told by the greatest historian of the modern age!, 03 Jan 2008
Frankly, I don't think that any historian can rival Adrian Goldsworthy in his extraodinary mix of scholarship and verve.

This is a majestic biography of Caesar's life, involving all of the aspects of the life of the man who broke the Roman Republic: politician, general and human.

Adrian Goldsworthy has a rare talent for balancing a simple text with wonderful intelligence, whereas Christian Meier clearly has the intelligence, but manages to hide it behind an impenetrable text. You really feel like you're dealing with a man who knows his stuff and has vigorously researched his material, unlike - as a previous reviewer said - Tom Holland, whose narrative reads more like a novel than a piece of historical writing.

I have read all of Goldsworthy's books and I would advise anybody interested in the topics of ancient or military history to do the same.

(Also looking forward to his next book 'How Rome Fell').

Perfect, 19 Sep 2007
You would be hard pushed to find a better book on this subject, the author does an excellent job in writing this book. I have read another book by this author and that is just as good. A recomended read.

Unique Source, 04 Sep 2001
In addition to the above, Dio covers the Varian disaster of 9 AD in Teutoburger Wald, where 3 Roman legions were lost under the leadership of the Governor Publius Quintillius Varus. Varus had been appointed governor by Augustus on the strength of family ties and a talent for extracting taxes rather than military ability, and Augustus bitterly regretted it later.

Fascinating to read about the Emperor's reaction to the news, and his grasp of the ultimate significance of the loss (i.e., Germany became too dangerous to invade, and so was excluded from the Romanised world). This book not only gives a superbly detailed account of the first Emperor, but also shows how the seeds of Rome's downfall were sown in the first 10 years of the christian calendar. You can also trace the beginnings of virtually every major medeival and modern war from this period in Roman history.

A uniquely compelling read.

Real history in the making, 21 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!

Here are just a few excerpts:-

To: Valerius Paulinus "I am furious with you, rightly or not I don't know, but it makes no difference. You know very well that love is sometimes unfair, often violent, and always quick to take offence, but I have good reason, whether or not it is a just one, to be as furious as I would be in a just cause. It is so long since I had a letter from you. The only way to placate me is to write me a lot of letters now, at long last - lengthy ones, too."

To: Sempronius Rufus "I had gone down to the Basilica Julia to listen to the speeches in a case where I had to appear for the defence at the next hearing. The court was seated, the presiding magistrates had arrived and counsel on both sides were coming and going; then there was a long silence, broken at last by a message from the Praetor. The court adjourned and the case was suspended, much to my delight for I am never so well prepared as not to be glad of a delay"

To: Cornelius Tacitus "I should like to obey your orders,but when you tell me I ought to honour Diana along with Minerva I find it impossible - there is such a shortage of boars. So I can only serve Minerva, and even her in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday.

On my way here I made up some bits of nonesense (not worth keeping) in the conversational style one uses when travelling, and I added something to them once I was here and had nothing better to do; but peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are only too easy to finish in the woods and groves. I have revised one or two short speeches, though this is the sort of disagreeable task I detest and is more like one of the hardships of country life than it's pleasures."

An accessable and enjoyable book, 19 Mar 2001
Many books have been penned about Ancient Rome. Some are well written and know what the're talking about - whilst others are long-winded and can bore you to tears in thirty seconds. Well, how about slicing through all that - and reading the words of a man who was actually there?

Pliny (the Younger) was a Roman nobleman born around 61AD. He served as a magistrate under the emperor Trajan, and was the nephew of Pliny (the Elder) the famous statesman and writer. It's refreshing to read the words of an actual Roman for a change instead of those of ancient or modern historians, and Pliny's letters cover many fascinating aspects of roman life. Also gratifying is that often we are also given the replies.

Among the topics covered are; family, villas, court cases, hobbies, and poetry (his own verses, it must be said, stink!). How refreshing to get inside a Roman nobleman's head, and share his thoughts (even though his letters were written perhaps with "one eye" on their eventual publication).

The most famous letter is addressed to his friend the roman historian Tacitus who has asked for an account of his uncle's death in the eruption of Vesuvius. This of course took place in 79AD and caused the destruction of both Pompeii and other towns in the Bay of Naples).

The translator Betty Radice has done a very good job rendering the letters into modern english and her twenty-two page introduction makes interesting reading. Brief appendices include a short glossary and three maps. If "real" roman history is your thing - you can't beat this collection!...

Great book, great price, 29 Sep 2008
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue., 11 Jul 2008
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

The Private Lives of Rome's Good and Bad Rulers, 17 Jun 2008
The Twelve Caesars was the first ancient book I ever read. Before then I had only known Classical history from the books written by modern day historians. In the intervening years I have read many other primary sources from this period, but Suetonius's work still stands as the richest and most readable look on Rome's Emperors.

Suetonius recounts the successes and failures as well as the private lives of the first twelve rulers of Rome after the fall of the Republic . He begins with Julius Caesar, then discusses Augustus at length before covering Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

What makes the book a joy to read are the inclusion of many fascinating anecdotes - many of them are highly amusing, disgusting, bizarre or funny.
He tells us about Caesar's embarassment about his baldhead, Claudius's mocked fight with a giant whale at the port of Ostia, Augustus's love of having the hairs on his legs flattened by warm walnuts and Caligula's ban on the mention of goats in his presence. These descriptions help bring the old emperors to life - You'll never see them in the same light the next time you see a solemn bust of Galba or Domitian at a museum.

Suetonius has often been considered an unreliable witness by many historians, but Michael Grant discusses the veracity of his work at the beginning of the book, showing us that the old court historian was much more reliable and less biased than many would suppose.

Robert Graves's translation is wonderful. The text is lucid and very readable. Graves would go on to use the information gained from this work to write his seminal novels 'I, Claudius' and 'Claudius the God', which were made into a highly acclaimed series in 1976.

The book also contains genealogical tables, maps, a discussion on coin portraits, a glossary of unfamiliar Roman terms, a Chronological table of the reigns of the emperors, a Key to place names (ancient and modern), a further reading list, and an index.

This is a must have for anyone interested in the early history of the Roman Empire, or anyone who loves Classical civilisation.

A Biography of One of the 'Great' Men of History, 09 May 2008
This is a big book in volume as well as content being over 500 pages long but Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has contrived to make it interesting for the reader from beginning to end. Many facts have been written about Alexander over the years, some true, some doubtful and much that is pure speculation. This in turn has given Alexander a mythical quality, bordering on god like proportions.

The author's writing style is both concise and lucid with no pretensions to the fact that he is the master and the reader by his very nature is the pupil. In a nutshell the author writes for everyone not just the scholar. This book is for anyone with an interest in the life and times of Alexander. The author progresses through the life of Alexander putting a little more meat on the bones with every passing phase of Alexander's relatively short life.

This is a book for everyone. For those who have found it difficult, or even impossible in the past to read and I mean read a history book from start to finish, rather than just go cherry picking facts from the numerous pages, then this is a good book to get your teeth into. It can be read almost like a novel, but is far more interesting than any fictional book.

Essentail reading for "Advanced" Alexanders, 14 Apr 2008
This is "the" book for those wishing to get to grips with every detail. But I have to echo the drawbacks from previous reviewers: detailed, complex English in places, and very poor maps by today's standars: even the new 2004 edition is a essentailly a reprint from the 1970's.
Beginners would be far better off with Michael Wood's "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great"; then read the original ancient sources; then this.

Magnificent, 25 Oct 2007
What boy hasn't imagined being Alexander the Great? Conquering one of the largest empires ever by the age of 32, the man has been stamped indelibly upon our collective memory as one of the greatest warriors ever. That he was for sure, but much more besides as well.

This very detailed biography delves into all aspects of Alexander, and it's evident on every page and in every sentence that Robin Lane Fox has studied his subject extremely well. Couple that with Fox's easy style and what you get is a real page-turner. Learned and yet accessible, what more could one expect from a history book? Extremely well done!

Humanising the myth, 06 Sep 2006
Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has written a superb biography of one of history's most mythologised characters.

Fox never patronises his audience with his writing style but neither does he make any assumptions that the reader is pre-armed with a firm grasp of classical history. He clearly explains where he gets his sources from, who he trusts, if there are conflicting accounts and where his judgements lie.

The book relates an epic story and Fox tells it in great detail; normally, the more detail a book provides, the better but in this particular case, the book loses one star in its rating because Fox's sentences can run to great lengths and become rather muddy (I'd give it four and a half if I could). Don't let that put you off buying this book, though, as it animates quite successfully Alexander's life and times, the politics and the geography. This book is especially recommended to those of you who have Oliver Stone's film, Alexander Revisited, to which Robin Lane Fox was an advisor.

Alexander The Great - Highly Recommended, 15 Aug 2004
I have not studied Classics and I had never read a biography of Alexander before but I could not put this book down. It was detailed and inspiring and I will be buying copies for friends. It is more than a biography, it is a tale of true adventure, war, bravery and leadership. I felt the author helped me, the reader, live in the times of Alexander. At the same time he reminded me that I was reading a historical chronical that was based on pieces of information that had been passed down or preserved. He distinguished between educated assumptions and facts, so I trusted him as an historian. The adventure and times as depicted in the book are thrilling and I recommend it highly.

good craft no creativity, 23 Oct 2008
Praise for the other works of this author induced me to buy this book. Caesar here does not come across as a colossus, but as a busy man moving from A to B, sometimes willy-nilly. Generally sympathetic to his hero, Goldsworthy demonstates knowledge of the basic primary sources without showing major reflective/critical powers. That is to say, I was disappointed by a lack of originality or any point researched in depth (like, for example, Hankel's work on Caesar's genius for far-reaching economic measures or Dodge's meticulous analysis of Caesar's military exploits, not to mention Brandes' evaluation of his personal/historical merits). It is a fair retelling of Caesar's life - no more.

Good text book, bad read, 03 Aug 2008
It's a very detailed account of Caesar's life, if you're into that. If you think this is a book that will suck you in like a Robert Fisk book then you're in for a surprise. I've gotten 250 pages in and I'm about ready to hang myself.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can write books which are not interesting, and manage to get away with it.

Compelling, 11 Jan 2008
I have read a number of books about Julius Caesar, the first being Boney Fuller's work in the 1970s, but this may be the last as it was certainly the best. Goldsworthy's clear writing style runs logically and throughly through Caesar's life. (Unlike the work of Fuller, and others, this book is no thematic cesspool!) It illuminates Caesar's failings and qualities, especially his ability to conquer by blending ruthless force with pragmatic politics and his great skill in resonating through the layers of Roman society. Compelling!

The tale of the greatest man of any age told by the greatest historian of the modern age!, 03 Jan 2008
Frankly, I don't think that any historian can rival Adrian Goldsworthy in his extraodinary mix of scholarship and verve.

This is a majestic biography of Caesar's life, involving all of the aspects of the life of the man who broke the Roman Republic: politician, general and human.

Adrian Goldsworthy has a rare talent for balancing a simple text with wonderful intelligence, whereas Christian Meier clearly has the intelligence, but manages to hide it behind an impenetrable text. You really feel like you're dealing with a man who knows his stuff and has vigorously researched his material, unlike - as a previous reviewer said - Tom Holland, whose narrative reads more like a novel than a piece of historical writing.

I have read all of Goldsworthy's books and I would advise anybody interested in the topics of ancient or military history to do the same.

(Also looking forward to his next book 'How Rome Fell').

Perfect, 19 Sep 2007
You would be hard pushed to find a better book on this subject, the author does an excellent job in writing this book. I have read another book by this author and that is just as good. A recomended read.

Unique Source, 04 Sep 2001
In addition to the above, Dio covers the Varian disaster of 9 AD in Teutoburger Wald, where 3 Roman legions were lost under the leadership of the Governor Publius Quintillius Varus. Varus had been appointed governor by Augustus on the strength of family ties and a talent for extracting taxes rather than military ability, and Augustus bitterly regretted it later.

Fascinating to read about the Emperor's reaction to the news, and his grasp of the ultimate significance of the loss (i.e., Germany became too dangerous to invade, and so was excluded from the Romanised world). This book not only gives a superbly detailed account of the first Emperor, but also shows how the seeds of Rome's downfall were sown in the first 10 years of the christian calendar. You can also trace the beginnings of virtually every major medeival and modern war from this period in Roman history.

A uniquely compelling read.

Where's the terror!, 18 Oct 2008
I was hoping this book would be a good follow-up to Alessandro Barbero's 'The Day of the Barbarians' but I was terribly disappointed.

Even though chronologically this book continues the narrative post Adrianople AD 378, it lacks the exciting narrative of the aforementioned title. Often, the author would digress and focus on some archeological find. I found this irritating to say the least.
Another annoying feature of this book was the tendency not to recount concurrent events in the same vein but in diffent chapters.

On the plus side there were some interesting parts: the activities of Galla Placida, Honoria and General Aetius in the Western Roman Empire; the Goths, Vandals plus the intrigues in Constantinople.

This book could have been much better if less attention was paid to archeology and the experiences of the main source on Attila and his Huns - Priscus of Panium - and more focus on delivering a smooth and enjoyable narrative.