The Romans: From Village to Empire: A History of Ancient Rome from Earliest Times to Constantine
Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola and Richard J.A. Talbert
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 544 pp., $35
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The history of ancient Rome is one of humanity’s great sagas—a long, dramatic narrative to which both “high culture” icons like Shakespeare and “pop culture” moguls like Hollywood producers repeatedly turn. The proper telling of this story, however, is no small challenge; it encompasses ten centuries, thousands of leading actors, dozens of intertwined cultures, three continents and the entire gamut of human motivations. To encapsulate all this within the covers of a book is to create a jewel.
Such jewels do exist, starting with Edward Gibbon’s immortal Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written in the latter part of the 18th century. This work began a venerable tradition of Roman historiography based largely on ancient authors. Gibbon was rather generous in taking those authors at their word, but later historians have been more critical. The principal role of modern scholars, in fact, has often been to compensate for the limitations of ancient sources by arbitrating among the true, the false and the unknown.
The classic example from the 20th century is Arthur E.R. Boak and William G. Sinnigen’s History of Rome to A.D. 565 (the first version appeared in 1929), which relies on ancient authors, too, but more critically and with better use of non-literary sources of information. Boak and Sinnigen also broadened the focus of their history beyond traditional political and military affairs to include, among other things, social organization, the place of women in Roman society, and religious traditions. Their History of Rome was so successful that it has rightly remained a standard college textbook for over 60 years.
Time marches on, however, and though Roman history itself has not changed, our knowledge of it certainly has, finally leaving Boak and Sinnigen behind. New information comes from myriad sources, including excavations and surface surveys as well as the increasingly more sophisticated disciplines of sociology, epigraphy and numismatics. Detailed, up-to-date monographs now span the breath of Roman culture: emperors, religious practices, politics, urbanism, social structure, economy, family life and much more. This sea-change in scholarship is obvious in The Romans: From Village to Empire, which cites studies dating after 1980 for virtually every key topic discussed in the volume.
The authors of The Romans, all distinguished scholars, have done much more than simply update Boak and Sinnigen, however. The very nature of the questions we can now ask about the Roman world has expanded. The ancient sources poorly represent the lives of ordinary Roman citizens, preferring to dwell upon the rich and the famous. We are only beginning to learn intimate details about the vast majority of our ancient ancestors, the people who actually raised the children, grew the food, built the roads and fought the wars. At Pompeii, for example, material dug up over the last couple of 051centuries is being studied according to its exact location in a given house, allowing scholars to reconstruct the activities that took place there and providing a clearer picture of daily life in a typical Roman city.
In recent years, we have learned much about the supply, distribution and usage of water throughout the Roman Empire. Scholars have reconstructed trade patterns by examining amphoras (used to transport such goods as wine or olive oil) and fineware pottery that was exported throughout the Mediterranean. We now know a good deal about food supplies, public hygiene, the burial practices of the lower classes, and the layout of the city of Rome as it evolved century by century—and this only scratches the surface.
Of course, a single-volume history cannot include every detail of Rome’s vast history, but the authors of The Romans explain their complex material so clearly that their treatment is credibly authoritative. The old histories of Rome have not been rendered utterly obsolete, but now we have more solid evidence. The authors might have been tempted to bury the political and military emphases dear to ancient authors under the sociological, economic and personal topics that have lately been popular with scholars. Commendably, this temptation has been resisted, and a nice balance is struck between the conventional history and the broader social material. The history of Rome is a great story, after all, and the authors tell it well by relating it to the many diverse human activities that, taken together, form a civilization. This book presents the history of all of Rome, not just a history of the nobility, politicians and army.
In sum, The Romans is well-illustrated, well-organized, thoughtful and effective. It will serve equally well as a textbook for college courses in Roman history or an accessible introduction for the curious non-scholar.
The history of ancient Rome is one of humanity’s great sagas—a long, dramatic narrative to which both “high culture” icons like Shakespeare and “pop culture” moguls like Hollywood producers repeatedly turn. The proper telling of this story, however, is no small challenge; it encompasses ten centuries, thousands of leading actors, dozens of intertwined cultures, three continents and the entire gamut of human motivations. To encapsulate all this within the covers of a book is to create a jewel. Such jewels do exist, starting with Edward Gibbon’s immortal Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written in the latter part […]
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