Customer Reviews

Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day (5 Denarii)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day" presents itself as a guide book for visiting ancient Rome -- not touring the remnants of ancient Rome as they exist today, but a trip back across eighteen centuries to Rome of about 200 AD, with advice on where to stay, information about quaint local customs, and suggestions of "must see" sights. Oh, and there is a list of useful phrases for the traveler such as "Noli me necare, cape omnias pecunias meas" ("Don't kill me, here's all my money"). The result is a fun way to almost experience what life in ancient Rome was really like.

Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day is a wonderful book and a great idea. In essence, it tells you want you need to know, circa 200 AD, if you plan to visit Rome. It tells you about the problems of getting there, the problems of finding lodging and meals, and, of course, the things every tourist will want to visit.
As a history buff, I loved it when mystery novelists like Davis and Saylor decided to create detectives and place them in Rome. It's led to other detectives in medieval Japan and Ancient Greece. One can only hope that Matyszak's cleaver idea will lead to guidebooks to ancient Thebes, Athens and Babylon, or perhaps guides to Song dynasty Westlake or Heien Kyoto.
The idea aside, the book is well written and packed full of interesting tidbits. What's missing is a bit more in the way of illustration. For example, distances from cities were described, but a map would have helped. Ditto the major roads into Rome. And what I really wanted was a detailed map of the Forums, pictures of the major buildings, and a description of a walk through the various Forums -- rather like some recent guidebooks have done for the Grand Canal in Venice, or the Seine in Centeral Paris. Guidebooks have come a long way in the last 10 years. This one seems more like a guide one would have bought in 1990, not one of the beautifully illustrated ones you get today.
Congratulations Philip Matyszak -- you have written a delightful book and, hopefully stimulated others to create similar works for their favorate historical periods.

I've read a lot of reference books to give myself a sense of what it was like strolling the streets of Rome 2,000 years ago. Turns out I could have just read this book and saved myself a lot of research! Mr. Matyszak writes with dry British wit and a sort of bifocal vision, not only reporting on what a tourist in 200 A.D. would see but tipping off the reader about what's going to happen to it over the next several centuries. It's a very easy and enjoyable read, peppered with appropriate quotes from Roman writers. As Michelinus would say, "Valet iter"!

I wanted to rate this four stars, because its "guidebook" approach is clever, and Matyszak writes gracefully and knowingly about ancient Rome. But there is a huge flaw in this book. What does the enthusiastic time-traveler want, more than anything, in a good guidebook? Maps! And visuals! That's where the book falls down. The only city map supplied (pp. 136-137) is low in detail, especially around the forum area, and misses out half of the buildings that are described in the text. As for visuals, there are just a few sketch drawings of building exteriors, and only eleven views (they are nice color plates, though) of building interiors. To get a sense of what it was really like to walk around ancient Rome, this is just not enough. Hence, only three stars for me.

This book is a good example of the challenges and trade-offs of print, as opposed to web, publication. There are literally dozens of current (2009) websites that will give the viewer an excellent walkabout through the ancient city, with VR, even 3D, and 360-degree reconstructions galore; it's very expensive, although not impossible, to reproduce these adequately in a printed book. On the other hand, Matyszak's text is better at least in some ways than much of what is out there on the web. Wish there was some way to combine the two - actually I wish that this book had been published on the Web to combine Matyszak's text with a full visual walkthrough. That kind of publishing has not really been done yet, but I think it's the wave of the future.

Meanwhile, if you like Matyszak, by all means get the book, but I suggest you read it while surfing some of the better Ancient Rome visual websites (can't mention them here, for some reason Amazon discourages web links in their reviews) to enhance your experience of the Imperial City in all its ancient glory.

By the way, Matyszak also has a similar book on Ancient Athens - see my review of "Ancient Athens On 5 Drachmas A Day." Readers who enjoy Matyszak's Rome will also like Matyszak's Athens.

A guide for Rome of 200 AD, it is full of history, advice to keep out of trouble, and lots of humor. It really gives you a sense of daily life during the height of the Roman Empire. The chapters really do their best to explain how to get around Rome, from places to eat to sites to see, from the games to the marketplaces, from the brothels to the temples. There is a section that even explains how to change your money. From the page numbers, to the list of useful phrases, you get the sense that this would be a great tour book for a time traveler. If only you knew how to speak Latin and had a Time Machine.

I wondered whether this would prove to be too much of a gimmick, but took a chance and am glad I did. The book has just the right mix of facts, impressions, humor, and typical travel information truly geared to an ancient traveler coming to the imperial capital. Both fun and informative from start to finish.

My husband and I were both Latin scholars when in school years ago.

Imagine our delight at finding this wonderfully informative travelogue through Ancient Rome!

This is not humor in the usual sense of the word, but rather a well-informed guide for the visitor to ancient Rome. It puts the reader back 2000+ years, and provide her with every bit of information needed to make a visit safe and enjoyable. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed their Latin studies, is a history buff, or is just curious about what life was like in the Rome of the Caesars.

Readable, packed with little-known facts, and not at all stuffy. Written by someone who clearly has gone deep into the subject, and come up with a gem.

This text is hysterical! I laughed out loud repeatedly while reading it. There is a wealth of information about everything you could ever want to know about the City of Ancient Rome. Although told as if written for a traveller in 200 C.E., the text makes occasional forays into the distant past as well as ahead to modern times as such excursions become important to understanding what is being said. I wish there had been a bit more detail in some sections, but at least I didn't spot any blatant factual errors. It was particularly useful for figuring out what had and what had not yet been built by the year 200. It is definitely entertaining and well worth a read.

The book tells you all you wanted to know about visiting Ancient Rome and more. This is great light fare to read at odd moments. Light though it might look, the book is meticulously researched, drawing on sources ranging over 300 years. The pages are sprinkled with ancient quotations: from epigrams, satires and other writings by the Latin poets and playwrights; from philosophers, historians and letter writers; tomb inscriptions; graffiti from Pompeii; and inscriptions from Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. And each chapter has artistically designed sidebars, headed RES ROMAE and containing related trivia.

I enjoyed this tremendously -- it's surprising how much information about day-to-day life even the big scholarly books about day-to-day life in Ancient Rome fail to touch upon. Something about the travel guide format really brings those facts out! Plus, the writing style is witty and engaging. This is an invaluable resource for those interested in the Roman Empire. The only reason I didn't give this five stars is because I too noted a couple of things I found questionable, such as the assertion that women did the shopping in Ancient Rome. Most sources I've seen say the opposite, though the evidence for that is so skimpy that I would be willing to believe Matyszak is correct -- however, it would've been good to have a more thorough listing of sources in the back, to allow us to weigh the evidence for ourselves. But most of this seems right on target to me.