Customer Reviews

The Myths of Rome (CLASSICAL STUDIES AND ANCIENT HISTORY)

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Myths of Rome is a very welcome addition to my library. Wiseman looks at the mythology of Rome not as a sad adjunct to Greek myths (a depressingly common theme in myth books), but as a generative and creative force in its own right. The book is gorgeously illustrated with b&w images throughout the text, as well as a stunning series of color plates, mostly of full-page reproductions of Renaissance paintings on (Roman) mythological scenes. The scholarship is impeccable, and I highly recommend this book.

This lavishly produced book, the winner of the 2005 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association, is a curiosity in that both author and press seem to have anticipated that its market would be the general reader as well as the scholar. The prose is much better than most academic fare, and the color plates are certainly worth Wiseman's careful elucidation. But the argument, in all its learnedness, is in my opinion, pitched above what most educated readers will choose to grapple with over the long haul, even with the book's thirty-one sidebars written in an even more popular tone.

Wiseman's basic thesis is that Rome had her own myths independent of the Greek ones and that these myths (mostly historical legends, in fact) showed the Romans to have been more relaxed and leering than most moderns imagine them to have been. The myths of a nation do reflect its values, and Roman mythology provides some good illustrations of this truth. Nevertheless, the average general reader will probably call a halt when he begins to feel, as I did, that the author is piling supposition on supposition to make scholarly points against academic rivals.

If you are a student of ancient Rome then by all means read this one through. For the general reader, I recommend borrowing the book, looking at the pictures, and then determining if you have enough interest in the legends of Rome and their historical implications to sustain you through three hundred pages.