A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome [Hardcover]

A.J. Langguth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 1994

A historically accurate recreation of ancient Rome captures the politics and personalities of such figures as the aristocratic Caesar, sharp-tongued Cicero, Octavian, Cleopatra, and others whose struggles led to war, murder, and the Augustan Age. 35,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sweeping from Marius and Sulla to the death of Cicero, Langguth (Patriots, S. & S., 1989) portrays the major political figures of the late Roman Republic. Unfortunately, he vacillates between attempts at popular biography and critical history, his style shifting abruptly between novelistic and annalistic as he strings factual comments together like beads. Errors of fact, chronology, and interpretation abound. For example, Caesar's age is inconsistently chronicled, and the definition of patrician is outdated and inaccurate. Popularization should at least be distinguished by a clear message or lesson, but here there is little to justify the dubious attempts at oversimplification. Apparently intended for interested lay readers, the book cannot be recommended.
James S. Ruebel, Iowa State Univ., Ames
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Langguth's narrative of the fall of the Roman republic begins in 81 B.C. with the confrontation of Julius Caesar and the dictator Sulla and the emergence of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Langguth then proceeds, through a series of progressively graver crises and progressively closer approaches to one-man rule, to the emergence of Caesar as supreme power. The intrigues and wars that followed constitute hardly more than an epilogue, for the republic was dead. Caesar and Cicero are the focal figures in Langguth's version of that story, but a host of other memorable actors are vividly portrayed. Langguth's concern throughout is readability, and this he certainly achieves. Fans of Colleen McCullough's massive fictional coverage of the same events will find Langguth's work a valuable companion to hers. Roland Green

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition. edition (April 9, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671708295
• ISBN-13: 978-0671708290
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,042,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Caesar, Pompey and Cicero - a Good Introduction, July 7, 2006

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David Stapleton (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (Hardcover)

I bought this book for two reasons: Pompey's campaign against the Cilician pirates (5 pages) and the bibliography (8 pages). While I was a little disappointed in the brief coverage of the campaign, I was not disappointed in the bibliography (I have ordered several books from it already).

Readers should understand that this is not an extensive volume on the history of Rome during the lives of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero. It is, however, a wonderfully told brief overview of those times. Consider this as a starting point for the novice to Roman history in the first century BC. The author writes in an easy style that makes the book very readable. Langguth makes the occasional effort to get inside the heads of the various protagonists, but for the most part confines his efforts to presenting the details of history as is appropriate for an overview history. The history is told in sequential order skipping back and forth between the main personae and traces their rise to power and eventual fall from grace. There is just enough detail to whet the appetite for more.

For further reading on Caesar and the times try Caesar by Christian Meier. P-)

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Popular History, September 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (Hardcover)

I read this book and liked it very much. Langguth dedicated this book to his high school Latin teacher who transcended a mechanical and arcane study of grammar and syntax and inspired the author and his fellow students with the history, "the story" if you will, of this long lost age which was so similar in many ways to our own. Prior to the Prostestant reformation and to a substantial extent even until 1965, Biblical scripture itself was the more or less the sole province of learned scholars and clerics who were privileged to know what had become an obscure academic and dead language. The story of the Gospel, the basic message, became obscured, if not somewhat lost, in pedantic and hair-splitting disputes over textual interpretations in the tradition of the pharisees of Jesus' day. It is in this context that Langguth seeks, as he explains in his Introduction, to bring the secular Scripture of the classics and its cultural legacy to the plebeian reader as was done with Holy Scripture begining five centuries ago. Thus, while Langguth's book is not perfect from an academic standpoint from which it does not pretend to proceed in any strict sense (for example no years known as B.C. ever existed in real time, that calendar was retroactively imposed centuries later), it is still actually more historically accurate than Shakespeare's accounts of these events and much more readable. This book is a good introduction to the history of this age and can be followed by a study in English translation of Plutarch to whom Langguth is largely faithful.

5 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Roman History Lite, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (Hardcover)

Considering the author did such a good job with the American Revolution in "Patriots," this book was a big disappointment.It lacks depth and is riddled with errors, e.g.,Cicero gave a great speech in defense of Milo; Crassus described as a "rich merchant". I was really annoyed with the author's use of the term "patrician" when the more correct term would be "Optimate" (hint: not all nobles were patricians).