There was a sort of joking meme going about last year that men as a rule seem to spend far more time thinking about the Roman Empire than is actually healthy for them. It was a nice little internet chuckle, and I didn’t think to much of it. I don’t actually like Roman history all that much, and think that there are more interesting parts and places to human history. But that being said, I do feel the need to sometimes give up my raging iconoclasm and join the zeitgeist, if for no other reason than to have a conversation with the people I share this world with.
That, and the fact that I have had this little book taking up space on my shelf sine my brother gifted it to me way back in 2020. Might as well jump into it.
Well, this is a history book. It says so right on the cover. It is specifically a history of ancient Rome. It says so right on the cover.
I remember not enjoying history too much. All the history textbooks we have to confront as children in our educational systems always give us the story chronologically, and in that we have some idea of how the whole thing shakes out, it feels like a spoiled story. I think many of our educators treat it as such as well. I think one of the reasons I initially enjoyed reading this is because Beard took an in media res approach to giving us the information, only later diving back into the whole silly Romulus and Remus story. Nor is the book a list of dates of battles and plot points. This is a pretty detailed look at life in Rome in a rather broad spectrum way.
But in the end, I stopped caring at some point. Reading this I began to remember, rather vividly, why I did not do well in that brief year why I attempted to be a classics major. Sure, I did get a kick every time a name I recognized was mentioned, but I just don’t have the reverence for the time period. It was not a fault of the book. I think Beard is certainly a good writer who manages to capture the information in an enjoyable way. But at some point, I just stopped caring.
Failures in Polymathy 