Customer Reviews

Chronicle of the Roman Republic: The Rulers of Ancient Rome from Romulus to Augustus (The Chronicles Series)

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I've read a lot of books on ancient Rome--everything from primary sources like Tacitus to Gibbon to modern scholarship. This book, quite frankly, stands out above them all.

It is very accurate factually, it explains some things (like Roman naming conventions, symbols, etc) that are hard to find in a straight-forward way in other books. Also, it doesn't fall into the trap of simply giving us the history of a few famous men--it does a comprehensive job of all parts of the early republic.

Nor does it fall into the trap of segmenting early Rome into conventional "eras" (Kings, Punic War, Civil Wars, etc). It simply makes chapters according to the chronology and makes even some of the less well known parts of early Rome interesting.

It handles both military/political history and cultural/religious history. Overall, as an experienced reader on ancient Rome this is both a great introductory book as well as handling more advanced aspects of Roman history.

This book is a truly enjoyable book, summarizing the history and mythology of the early Roman Empire. Unlike many works on the topic, it does not attempt to get too scholarly or erudite, but just puts out what is important. I particularly like the attitude of the author of pointing out areas which are more likely legend than fact, but illustrating their importance as a manifestation of what the Romans believed.

Chock full of modules, photos, drawings, and graphics, this is an ideal sourcebook that can be read in one long siting, from time to time, or simply as a resource. The best thing about the book is it contains numerous tidbits of Roman history that relate to the Modern World and convert into excellent cocktail party or watercooler talk. Wonder how the tradition of carrying the bride over the threshold began ? Read the chapter on the Sabine Women. Curious about the naming of the months ? The derivation of a "sardonic grin" ? "candidate: ? I am just tipping the iceberg, here. Everything from the Punic Wars, to the operation of the Roman government, to how to wear a toga is in here. Enjoy and learn.

Chronicle Of The Roman Republic: The Rulers Of Ancient Rome From Romulus To Augustus by Roman history expert Philip Matyszak is a fascinating and impressively accessible historical study of the fifty-seven kings, consuls, and tribunes who ruled during Rome's gradual evolution and transformation from a republic into that of an empire. From such famous figures such as Julius Caesar, to lesser-known leaders like Cato the Censor, these Roman leader's great deeds, cruelties, and political acts that shaped the flow of history for good or for ill are straightforwardly presented in this highly recommended, pictorially illustrated, historical survey, which was written for (and is especially recommended to the attention of) non-specialist general readers.

The Chronicle of the Roman Republic is a great book. If you enjoy history, this book is for you. Most of us are familiar with the Emperors of the Roman Empire such as Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula, but many people do not know about the times before the Emperors came into power. This book dives into the Republic of Rome covering every aspect of life from those times. The first chapter of the book is on the kings of Rome. The founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are in this chapter. The kings came right before the beginning of the Republic. The next chapters of the book tell how the Republic was created and how it eventually ended. What is so good about this book is that it tells you every leader of Rome and gives them each their own profile. The famous leaders such as Pompey the Great, Crassus, Sulla and Julius Caesar are inculded in the book. Even lesser known people are shown, such as Cato the Censor and Spartacus. Not only does this book cover who the leaders were, but it tells you about Romes birth as a city, Romes many enemies, such as the Sabines and Etruscans, Romes accomplishments as a city and Romes great archicture. This book is a great addition to any history lovers collection. A great book that would go with this one is called Chronicles of the Roman Emperors. This book covers the time after the fall of the Republic to the eventual fall of Roman Empire. This book contains the same interesting features that this book has.

The history of the Roman republic--a story about how one city in Italy overthrew a monarchy, conquered her neighbors, united Italy, defeated all her rivals in the Mediterranean, and descended into civil war and ultimately monarchy again--presents a formidable challenge to any beginner. The republic itself was a political entity so complex it bewildered foreigners and Romans alike. Its magistrates--a dazzling succession of consuls, suffect consuls, dictators, praetors, aediles, tribunes and special commissioners stretching over nearly 500 years--were too numerous for even the Romans (who were otherwise quite happy to list these sorts of things) to bother recording them all. Finally, the evidence of who these men were and what, when, where, and why they did what they did lies scattered across coins, temple inscriptions, grave markers, bronze tablets, pottery sherds, and written histories that as often seek to justify as to inform. To reconstruct this fragmentary and sometimes unreliable evidence into an integrated narrative is far too daunting for even the most intelligent and motivated student, which is why anyone interested in beginning to take up the task should begin with The Chronicle of the Roman Republic by Philip Matyszak.

Dr. Philip 'Maty' Matyszak, an Oxford-educated historian and author of Enemies of Rome from Hannibal to Atilla the Hun, Sons of Caesar: Rome's Julio-Claudian Emperors, and the eagerly-awaited Political Sociology of the Roman Republic from Sulla to Augustus, has written a highly-readable, entertaining, and informative chronicle of the leading magistrates of the Roman republic. In 231 pages, Matyszak narrates the lives of 57 Roman leaders, beautifully embellished with 293 illustrations (98 in color), including maps, military diagrams, photographs of modern sites, coins, gems, mosaics, portrait sculptures, ancient weapons, ships, household artifacts, inscriptions, and modern paintings depicting Republican themes (such as the deputation to Cincinnatus and the suicide of Cato).

After a brief introduction covering "Republican Virtues" and "The Rise of Rome", the Chronicle is organized into four parts: the regal period, the founding of the republic, the wars of expansion, and the era of Caesar. The basic units of each section are devoted to a single Roman leader, including the famous (Scipio, Marius, Sulla, Cicero, Caesar, Brutus), the should-be-famous (Poplicola, Camillus, Marcellus, Livius Drusus, Sertorius), the historically important (Appius Claudius, Flamininus, the Gracchi), the notorious (Flaminius, Galba, Saturninus, Clodius), the legendary (Romulus and Remus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Servius Tullius), and of course those figures of Roman virtus (Horatius Cocles, Cincinnatus, Regulus, and someone the author calls "Cato the Stoic") who defined the Republic for many generations of students. Helpfully, each of the 57 figures are placed on a proper timeline, and they are listed with basic genealogical facts, offices held, principal achievements, and manner of death. The sum of all this is like a highly approachable and chronologically arranged version of Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (or, if you prefer, National Geographic meets Broughton's Magistrates of the Roman Republic).

Strangely, although the Chronicle comes to an end, it does not actually have an ending--no epilogue putting these lives into an overarching context. This is regrettable. The author's introduction contains a number of interesting claims that attempt to name the essence of the republican character ("They were hard men -- prudish, superstitious, brutal, and utterly uncompromising. And they were also unflinchingly, sometimes suicidally, brave. ... They were intolerant of weakness, exploiting it in others and despising it in themselves. They won their wars simply because, to this arrogant nation, the concept of defeat was literally unthinkable") and to trace the causes of the decline of the republic ("conquered peoples and freed slaves were welcomed into the ranks of citizens. When this policy of inclusiveness changed, the consequences led directly to the fall of the Republic"). Yet by the end, we have so many examples of the sexually shameless, the irreligious, and even the compromising (Caesar, Clodius, and Cicero readily come to mind), what are we to make of the generalizations in the introduction? Here an epilogue would have been quite helpful.

To be sure, the Chronicle does provide much of the context needed to understand the lives of our republican leaders, but it does this using a strategy that yields mixed outcomes. The basic technique is one that has always enjoyed wide use in popular magazines and has now become ubiquitous in college textbooks--viz., the "special feature" cut-away, those little boxes of text on seemingly random topics that interrupt the narrative and divide one's attention. To be sure, it's very nice to have listed the principal historical sources (Livy and so forth), the offices of the Roman constitution, and the Twelve Tables. Also, discussing the Twelve Tables in the context of Appius Claudius the Decemvir, Roman roads in the context of Appius Claudius the Blind, and Stoicism in the context of "Cato the Stoic" certainly seems reasonable enough. However, the placement of many special features make less sense. For example, "Trade and the Roman Aristocracy" interrupts the discussion of Livius Drusus to no good effect, whereas it could have been quite useful when introducing the lex Flaminia or discussing Cato the Elder. Why, in the context of Tiberius Gracchus, we should learn how to don a toga still mystifies me, though in the context of his brother Gaius, the special feature on the publicani was quite apt. Again, the section on Pompey is strangely interrupted by a cut-away on gladiators (and not even because he mentions that Pompey had a real taste for the games), whereas the section on Crassus (who fought a whole army of gladiators) has only a small picture of an archaic one. For this cut-away strategy, it's hard to know whether to blame the author or not: sometimes editors can be such unconscionable populares.

Although the Chronicle is a very good introduction to the men, events, and society of the Roman republic, its biographical approach needlessly omits much regarding the moral and philosophical ideas that motivated these men. With the exception of the influence of Stoicism on Cato the Younger, one seldom gets the impression that the Romans thought very much or very deeply about where they were going, why they were going there, and what fundamentally they were fighting about. Then (as now) ideas mattered: at the root of many social conflicts was a culture clash (e.g., between Hellenism and the agrarian mos maiorum), and for the Romans whose civitas justified (at least in their own eyes) the annihilation of iron age tribes, it would have been nice to have heard a bit from the men who distinguished the Romans from such expansionist tribes as the Huns. The polymath Varro, the philosopher Lucretius, the poet Catullus, and comedian Plautus must have expressed what some of the leading Romans thought of themselves, their world, and their colleagues, and their voices must be considered at least as important as the method for donning a toga.

With only these two criticisms, however, I couldn't recommend either a better introduction to the Republic or a more enjoyable reference work for even the well-read Romanophile.

Mr. Matyszak's Chronicle of the Roman Republic is a coffee table style book beautifully illustrated on nice heavy glossy paper. The book is comprised of biographical sketches of all the leading figures of the Republic presented in chronological order. The author presents a nice introduction to the Republic but this presentation style doesn't allow for a clear flow of the course of events as often more than one figure participates. Thus, specific events are occulted as the role of major figures is gleaned only through the course of dozens of pages. With no uniform image emerging the reader is left without much of a big picture understanding - events come and go with little connection from one to the other. Also the clipped writing style with occasional dangling modifiers doesn't help bring events to life. The author seems eager to tell his tale, but falls short.

This book is small enough, at fewer than 240 pages of text, that the reader is able to finish it quickly enough to obtain a good overview of the history of the Roman Republic that could not be easily obtained from a larger or more detailed text. The major historical figures are discussed in groups of three to five interacting contemporaries, their images are provided from sculptures and coins, and the historical and cultural contexts are provided at the proper level of detail so that the reader is not bogged down yet is given enough information to make the text useful. From the perspective provided by this book, I was amazed to learn of the seemingly constant little wars and battles, interspersed among the larger ones, some consuming the lives of tens of thousands of men. Hardly any of these men (there apparently are no Roman women acting on the political or military stage) were not involved in more or less overt political machinations and maneuverings, to say nothing of the assassinations of rivals. It's a wonder that some of them lived as long as they did. The author puts it all in good perspective.

Many have forged analogies between the empire of ancient Rome and the modern United States. According to some, the current decline of the USA mirrors, or at least shares some salient features with, the decline and fall of Rome. Of course such analogies have one major flaw, namely, that Rome didn't fall until long after it became an empire with a dictatorial emperor at its helm. But before Rome saw the likes of Caligula and Nero, it was a Republic ruled by an elected Senate with an hierarchy of various offices. Roman citizens, rich land-owning men, had voting rights and were, relatively speaking, "free men." In essence, the Roman Republic was a limited democracy with officials representing the citizenry, governmental checks and balances, and codified laws. Most, if not all, of that changed when the Emperor Augustus, adopted heir of Julius Caesar, gained supreme power following the Battle of Actium. The current United States resembles the Roman Republic far more than the subsequent Roman Empire. As such, modern Americans have far more to learn from the 27 BC fall of the Roman Republic than from the 476 AD fall of the (western) Roman Empire. Analogies between the USA and Rome should then start, and hopefully end, with the ill-fated Roman Republic.

"Chronicle of the Roman Republic" provides a good starting point for learning about this influential ancient government. But it goes further. Before the time of the Roman Republic looms the time of pre-historic legend. Here history mingles with myth and facts remain hard to substantiate. Blame the Gauls. They sacked the then miniscule city around 387 BC and destroyed most of the records. All that remained were fables speckled with bits of fact. Better than nothing. The book opens in this murky fog in which gods influenced human behavior and lineage. Rome's first rulers, in the time of legend, were Kings, and the book starts with the eponymous fratricidal Romulus. This first section also covers, via text box inserts, the Sabine women, the Palatine, Vestal Virgins, The Twelve Tables, the Etruscans, and the end of the rule of kings during the reign of Tarquin the Proud following the rape of Lucretia and the subsequent uprising lead by Lucius Iunius Brutus. The rest of the book delineates the rulers, or elected Consuls, of the Roman Republic right up to the final Consul, Octavian, who became the Emperor Augustus. Along the way the book covers the general culture of ancient Rome, its enemies including the Gladiator Spartacus, three Punic wars, and the gradual dissolution of the Republic. Around 80 BC Sulla Felix figured out that a strong army could overturn the will of the Roman Senate. He used one to become dictator. Sadly, others followed this example, including the infamous Julius Caesar, with whom the book deals at length. After the section on the Ides of March, the book concludes "History has been kinder to Caesar than he deserves." The final section leads up to the total collapse of the Republic with luminous names such as Brutus, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Cicero, and Octavian. Civil war, conspiracies, and power struggles changed the 500 year old Republic into an Empire under the absolute rule of an Emperor.

"Chronicle of the Roman Republic" serves as the prequel to "Chronicle of the Roman Emporers," also published by Thames and Hudson. Together they cover the entire reign of Rome, from its founding in the 8th century BC to its demise in 476 AD. Rome often gets a bad rap as a barbaric and morally infantile regime, but it laid many of the foundations for what we now consider "free" societies. The books present the Roman story with accompanying eye-catching graphics, illustrations, and photographs. Throughout, the text remains accessible to newcomers and those just dabbling in Roman history. Ultimately, Rome's story provides an ominous example to modern day democracies. "Rule by the people," no matter how deeply cherished, remains forever vulnerable to power and brute force. Knowing the how and why behind an ancient toppled Republic, as revealed in these excellent volumes, may help prevent history from repeating itself in the present.

I liked this book a lot. I've several books about Roman History, but almost all from the end of the Republic to the end of the Empire. This one gives an overview of the main actors from the era of the kings to the end of the Republic, focusing on the consuls' lifes. So you read about the battles in the Punic Wars as long as they happen during the lifes of the different consuls, not the other way around. The book is well ilustrated, with maps, images of coins, statues and roman's works.

This is not only a good reference book, but also a good read. It provides a lot of general and specific knowledge about the Roman Republic for the non-specialized reader.