Customer Reviews

A History of the Roman World 753-146 BC

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of the first books I read on Roman history. This along with Scullard's other book that covers from the Gracchi to Nero make a great pair that covers the entire Roman Republic plus the first few emperors. The book is pretty easy to read, and the author has provided an extensive bibliography and series of endnotes for the reader who wants more. I high recommend this book to anyone interested in Roman history.

Scullard's work has been and continues to remain the single best introductory text book to Roman history. I have used this book at the Graduate and undergraduate level, and even chosen to use it in my own classes. Scullard makes the subject learnable at all levels and using a clear thematic scheme aids even the novice reader. I highly recommend this book to anyone desiring to gain a good foundation of Roman history.

Scullard has done an excellent job of bringing to life Rome's history from her tradtional founding to the time of the conclusion of the Third Punic War. Scullard covers not only the military aspects of the Roman Republic, but looks at her social, literary, economic, and political atmospheres as well. His use of archeology and his knowledge of the geographical lay of the land helps bring a very scholary critique of his ancient sources and very much brings the book to life. It is very well written and is easy to read while at the same time being very informative. Scullard's History of the Roman World is a very useful source for any study of Early Rome (at any level) and I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

This book covers Rome from its founding to its becoming the premier Mediterranean power. The disussion of Rome's origins (incl. the two main theories of the origin of the Etruscans) is quite good. There is also good background on the Italic tribes and the Greek cities that surrounded Rome. It covers the various phases of Rome's rise to power in a well-organized and well-written fashion. The primary emphasis is on constitutional and geo-political history (my main interest). There is, however, a section covering Rome's cultural aspects that concludes the book.

Scullard takes a rather unique approach to Roman history, stopping before the Gracchi and thus avoiding the increasingly confused history of the nation just as it is unarguable moving from city-state status. As always, Scullard's work is well researched but not the best presented for the undergraduate audience. A good text if the instructor is able and willing to explain things to students.

After reading the primary sources (Livy, Tacitus,Virgil etc.) and specialized period histories (early and late Empire, etruscan), I realized that I needed to fill gaps. Scullard is the perfect answer--detailed but not so detailed that you lose the mental structure of Roman history you build as you read. I now have a much better grasp of the political history of the early Republic, as well as of the legal and religious systems of the Republic. That being said, several words of caution are in order. First, as noted in other reviews, this is not the most recent history, and as such does not reflect the archaeological discoveries of the last decade or so. Second, because it was originally written 50 years ago (hasa been updated, but not rewritten since), Scullard expresses his preference for old Roman virtues versus barbarian cultures--an approach that can seem quaint. Third, the maps, which are essential to understanding what you're reading about since the Romans are fighting somewhere all the time, are few, badly located and hard to read. For me, though, these are minor defects in comparison to the excellent writing and scholarship evident throughout the book.

Solid history of Rome from its foundation, through the Punic wars and the domination of Greece. Scholarly but readable, gives a good understanding of why Rome rose to power.

Whoever said that history was boring must have been referring to this book. It's difficult to blame the subject matter when the author sabotages the topic at every turn.

The first complaint is that there is a noticeable lack of helpful maps. What maps there are are located at the ends of the chapters instead of at the beginning. This small change in layout would bring meaning to the litany of cities and territories that Scullard rattles off. Likewise, neither is there a whole Mediterranean map nor are there territorial expansion maps provided anywhere. The result is that the reader's eyes glaze over for 30 pages while Scullard rambles on about the topic at hand. If the goal is to teach, the lack of maps really hurts the book.

The second complaint is that Scullard wastes a lot of space backtracking through the timeline, repeating events over and over. The reason for this is his separation of topics: the peoples of Italy/Rome, Rome and Carthage, Rome and the Mediterranean, and Rome's culture. Because he separates these topics, he is forced to repeat the same events several times to discuss them under different lights. The effect is jarring for the reader as time jumps back and forth several decades, if not centuries, at a time. 600 years becomes a blur with no definitive timeline to hang events from. I kept praying that Scullard would bring the topics together into an integrated whole. Unfortunately, the piecemeal presentation continued right up to the last pages of the Culture section.

Another problem with the book is the author's unwillingness to turn this history into his own history. Feeling it necessary to bring up every alternative interpretation of history, he spends a lot of time discussing, then discrediting competing theories, always finally giving his version of the history. The style is irritating and confusing. The book's pacing would improve if he would refrain from half-heartedly showing all facets and simply focus on presenting his history.

A minor gripe was his inexplicable desire to use ye olde English word 'thither' every few pages. While a perfectly cromulent word, it's use has been out of vogue for a century. This, and other attempts to sound scholarly, make reading the book a pain. His sentence construction, for example, eschews commas where they would help with context. I found myself re-reading sentences because the subject was confusingly juxtaposed with modifying clauses. This style is interesting if cleverly done, but Scullard's inability to pull off this trick leads to reader frustration.

Scullard also has a tendency to drop a topic just as it gets interesting. The 'Twelve Tablets' and 'Vestal Virgins', among others, are two topics that seem pretty crucial to understanding Roman law and culture, but he simply declares the details of these topics to be beyond the scope of the book and drops the topic altogether. He doesn't give a listing (at the very least!) of the laws inscribed on the Twelve Tablets, and he doesn't describe the significance of the Vestal Virgins, though both topics pop up at various times throughout the history. It is inexusable to bring up topics such as these without adding details. Every time Scullard has a chance to draw the reader in with interesting details, he blows it by closing the door on the reader.

But more than anything else wrong with the book, the primary problem is that the book is just too dull for words. It's been said that history is more than just learning about names and dates, but apparently no one told the author this. The book is almost exclusively names and dates. While there are certainly reams of raw data to plow through, none of it is presented in a way that enlightens the reader or provides real insight into the history of the Roman world. The book left me less likely and less interested in pursuing Roman history further. That is its biggest crime.

Unfortunately, I bought Scullard's next installment From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 86 as a two-volume set from Amazon. I can only hope that the second work is better than the dismal first installment.

I do not recommend this book to any layperson. And I can't see how an advanced scholar would benefit from this book over more authoritative sources. 2 stars for the tons of content, but no extra points for the overall poor quality of the book.

This is an old history of Rome, originally written in the 1930s, which dates it in many ways. To be honest, it is not an exciting read - not at all. There are long sections of descriptions of encounters of various tribes and peoples (now utterly obscure) with the Roman war machine, listed like a catalogue. The prose is also lackluster and uneven, with academic jargon and sometimes turbid syntax, but for the most part clear.

That being said, there is no question that the subject matter is very very interesting. You start with a description of the political geography of the Italian peninsula, which was surprisingly useful, e.g. Rome lacked a good port and so developed as an agrarian rather than a trading people, having to defend itself against countless powerful neighbors.

Then, you get the mythical origins of Rome - Aeneas, Romulus, up through the kings who were overthrown in favor of the republic; they are treated clinically, rather than told as stories, with archaeological evidence, etc. The evolution of Roman government and law is essential reading, whereby rotating magistrates were elected, the Senate ruled fairly well, participation was widened to include the Plebs, and laws were written in the Twelve Tablets. What they achieved was far more stable and long-lasting than anything the Greeks did at that time.

The next great step is how Rome consolidates control over the entire Italian peninsula. Essentially, rather than simply conquering and trying to occupy and exploit - the traditional empire goals that reach natural limits in the generation after the charismatic conqueror-leader - the Romans sought to create allies. They did so by bringing prosperity (with roads and other infrastructure) and a comparatively lasting peace, enforced by a supposedly noble group (which I think is mythic propaganda). This established a strong base of loyalty that, when put to the test by invasion, largely held. It also provided a rationale for why the Roman Empire was able to expand and last: the co-opted elites into the system (offering jobs and status) and "civilized" them via immersion in Roman legal culture.

Things began to change once Rome grew beyond Italy. After the sack of Rome by a Celtic tribe, it encountered the Hellenistic Greeks (Pyrrhus and his Pyrrhic victories). But its greatest adversary was Carthage, which led to a monumental and existential war for nearly 50 years. You get the story of Hannibal, a general of genius who invaded Italy and nearly crushed Rome forever; his methods forced the Roman military to become more professional, essentially training troops to take more initiative than was possible in their phalanxes, whose rigidity resulted in the Cannae annihilation. As the only Mediterranean superpower, the conquest of Greece and Seleucid Syria was something of a game after Hannibal's defeat by Scipio, and the start of the Roman Empire under the republic. With the razing of Carthage, Rome has no adversary that could threaten its existence.

Rome at that time was, in a sense, the "new world": while highly organized rather than "barbaric" anarchic state, the Romans could in no way match the states of the east in terms of culture, i.e. art, literature, philosophy, mathematics, architecture. The Romans were doers, the ultimate pragmatists, hence their supreme excellence in organization, administration, and warfare and disinterest in the other arts; they did not even develop a coin currency until they needed to manage war debt while Hannibal was in Italy. In their parochialism, the strove to meet certain ideals, the mos maiorum of honor, piety, and duty to the state.

Scullard presents the traditional view of how Rome changed at that time, around 200BC. In a nutshell, with easy revenue from conquest and a size that made it impossible to treat subject peoples with the judiciousness that the Latin, Italians, and Etruscans received, the ROmans began to get lazy and decadent. Even their Italian allies began to feel treated as subjects. While to a degree this is certainly true, it fits too cleanly into a moralistic tale for my taste. That is Scullard's view however, and he presents it convincingly.

There is a final section tacked on on religion, literature, and socio-economic organization. It is by far the worst part of the book, but there are so many interesting nuggets that it is worth a skim, particularly on the transmogrification of the animistic spirits of early Rome into the personalities of the Greek gods, as Rome itself became civilized under the Hellenes.

I would recommend this book with these caveats. I am glad I read it, but it was a slog and definitely dated with a somewhat romantic take. It is for students and serious history enthusiasts. Unfortunately, I bought it because of the praise I read here. For the casual reader, there must be livier histories of this period.