Customer Reviews

Roma Eterna

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Roma Eterna is an ambitious attempt at alternate history and the base assumption is audacious indeed. What, asks Silverberg, if the Roman Empire had never really collapsed but instead endured and prospered? Silverberg proceeds to answer this question by highlighting a series of 10 historical moments in such an alternative history that could mark key turning points in such an Empire. The vignettes themselves are often absorbing and Silverberg mixes in just enough actual history to make the venture worthwhile. Human nature, one sees, remains the same irrespective of ruler or system of government. The Empire parallels with real history like the bloody purges of Robespierre and the colonial voyages that subjugated (often brutally) the Orient and the New World. For all its ponderous bureaucratic inertia and the sheer logistic barriers, the Empire is pervasive and powerful enough to crush any attempt at true democracy - brief flickers of a "Republic" which is more an oligarchy or merchant aristocracy are as far as we go. In the end, a band of Hebrews seeks to escape to another plant as the only alternative to Rome's crushing embrace.

Bold as this attempt at alternative history is, Silverberg strangely falters thereafter. His examination of the circumstances in each of the 10 events is disappointingly shallow and the ending in particular seems highly contrived. A map of the world using the Roman names for various countries and a parallel timeline linking the Roman dates with the AD calendar would have made things easier for the reader as well. Having read several of Silverberg's masterpieces. I expected better from him. I started reading this book as if sitting down to a delicious meal; by the end, it was as if the food had been but an illusion and my hunger remained unappeased.

Three characteristics recommended this book to me: 1) I am a fan of Roman history 2) I love SF short stories 3) Robert Silverberg is one of my favorite authors. With this combination, I figured I couldn't go wrong and bought this book on a whim without looking at Amazon's ratings, which I have come to rely on increasingly. I'll detail why all 3 of these characteristics failed this book and forced me to rate it 1 star, the lowest rating I have ever given a book. Normally, I don't finish books that bad but my mistake was to take too few books with me on my 3 week vacation (which was a Danube river cruise followed by a week in Constantinople/Istanbul since my hobby is visiting all the current countries that made up the Roman Empire at it's greatest extent). Therefore, I didn't have enough books to read and, once I finished everything else, I had to read this book or nothing during my cruise.

1) I expected Silverberg to be more knowledgeable about Roman history. Reading this book, my illusion disappeared quickly but as I plowed through this incessant book, I expected that he would delve further into Roman history than tossing off a few place names and the barest outlines of the empire's history. Ostensibly, Silverberg visited a few well-known Roman sites like Tivoli and Capri since he constantly refers to them but the problem with that is he, well, constantly refers to them.

2) The SF extrapolations and even simple plot elements are virtually non-existent. These "stories" are more vignettes with the last few pages wrapping up what plot elements there are.

3) Silverberg's writing is well-crafted but his characterization is thin and his plots, as I mentioned above, don't exist.

If you like Silverberg, I strongly recommend avoiding this book and buying some of his excellent work such as Nightwings, Dying Inside, At Winter's End, Kingdoms of the Wall, etc. If you like Roman History, read Tacitus, Suetonius, and even Procopius. If you like Alternate History about the Roman Empire, read Harry Turtledove's Krispos Trilogy, Videssos series, or Agent of Byzantium. Turtledove is a professor of Byzantine/Roman history and a master of alternative history. His worst efforts look good next to this mess.

I have to admit to a soft spot in my heart for anything by Robert Silverberg, since he's written some of the books that most moved me over the years. From Thorns to Shaderach in the Furnace to Up the Line, he has written an amazing number of classic novels and shorter fare. Despite the fact that he's written many pure SF novels, he also has a fondness and penchant for writing about the ancient world.

Here we get a set of short stories (which is not clear from the cover: bad publisher, no biscuit!) which display the unique tone and amazing attention to detail that characterizes much of his work. The quality is a bit uneven, with some of the stories being somewhat unreadable, but the majority of them are quite good and one or two are very good indeed.

For example, the first story after the front matter ("With Caesar in the Underworld") bears the plot of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, with a lead character of Faustus ("Falstaff"), set in the wonderfully decadent ancient Rome of this alternate history. There are little sparkly details throughout that make the story bump along, teasing you with both the puzzles that form the alternate history bits and the tidbits of fun (parallels with the lifted Shakespeare plot, for example). It... tickles.

Other reviewers have complained that Silverberg doesn't dive as deeply into the history part, that the stories are all little "what if..." one-trick ponies. But I think those reviewers are missing the fact that in virtually all of these character driven stories, there is at least one other "angle" that Silverberg is playing with. Once I recognized what he was doing, it was a lot of fun to both read the stories as straight AH yarns and also be watching for the sly games.

This isn't the Silverberg of the great early 70's novels. Nor does it quite match his lovely time-travel novel "Up the Line" (if you've not read that, get it with this). It's just that no one except possibly Gene Wolfe quite matches his style and careful, multi-layered craftsmanship. I enjoyed this collection (despite, as noted, some warts) and, if you like alternate history, you probably will too.

Robert Silverberg's "Roma Eterna" is actually a collection of short stories he wrote between 1989 and 2003 detailing a Roman Empire that never fell. While each story is a stand-alone tale within the alternate history of the world, taken together, they read much like another recent alternate history that details a radically different history of Euroe and Asia: Kim Stanley Robinson's "Years of Rice and Salt".

It becomes apparent very early in the book that Silverberg envisions not merely one but a chain of events as being necessary for Rome to not fall: a failed Jewish Exodus, Christianity never arising, a strong Emperor heading off the Third Century crisis, a definitive destruction of the Northern barbarians and Persia and an assassination of Mohammed before he could spread the word of Allah. In the context of world history we as we know it, the chain is a pretty fragile one, but it does make for an interesting exercise in history - much like the entire book. Some of his ideas have a very real ring of possibility to them: a Rome squandering the military might of a generation on an unsuccessful attempt at invading the Americas, Eastern and Western Empires that eventually fall on each other in a series of Civil Wars, a Rome grown fat and decadent on trade throughout the world that breeds emperors even more insane and bizarre than those known historically. However, for each of these interesting and realistic twists, he allows himself more than a few historical parallels: the World Wars, Leonardo da Vinci, the French Revolution - and his modern Rome (of 1970) bears a great deal of resemblance to a modern Europe under a traditional Roman hegemony.

In all, though, I really liked this book, although I suspect it's not for everyone. In fact, I would direct scholars or fans of Roman and Byzantine history towards it before I would the average sci-fi/fantasy/alternate history fan. He knows his Roman history well, and he's not afraid to make obscure use of it. Sometimes this makes for neat touches (like having the Eastern Empire fall to the West in 1453, the year the Eastern Empire in actuality fell to the Ottomans), and sometimes it just makes for a lot of names and dates. The book is basically one great conceit to the 'what if' bundled inside an extensive history. If that's your sort of thing (and it certainly is mine), you'll love it. Otherwise, you may find youself rapidly bored or confused.

A collection of short stories that, alas, should probably have stayed short stories. Grouped together like this, the niggling little problems with each one amass into one or two huge glaring headaches.

The premise of this book, of course, is that the Roman Empire never fell. Unlike most alternative history, this involves not just one point of departure, but a series of highly improbable occurrences that would allow the Empire - indeed, any empire - to last over 2500 years. If you can swallow that premise, you shouldn't have much trouble with any of the other stories in this book, give or take a few historical howlers.

The stories are interesting historical fiction, but not until the end do they become good alternate history. 90% of the book could conceivably have taken place during the actual time of the Roman Empire, and didn't need to be set in the 14th or 19th centuries at all.

The stories are told from an interesting perspective, all of them narrated by someone close to the Imperial throne but usually lacking any real power or influence. Unfortunately, there is no continuity in the characters from one chapter to the next. Kim Stanley Robinson achieved this masterfully in "The Years of Rice and Salt"; given the many comparisons to his book I wish Silverburg could have done the same. With no main character to root for, the chapters remain a set of disjointed short stories - enjoyable in and of themselves, but I wish a bit more work had gone into turning them into a full-length novel.

If it hadn't been for our home computer acting up, I might not have ever finished reading this book.

It's an interesting premise: Silverberg posits a world where the Roman Empire never fell. It just kept on going. And yet the way Silverberg tried to tell this story fell flat in so many ways.

First of all, there's the structure. Rather than pick one time period and stick with it, Silverberg keeps jumping through time. The book is essentially a series of unconnected short stories, the only thing in common being the setting. Just when you're starting to care about the characters in the story, that story ends and they're never mentioned again. Or, if they are, it's an off-handed reference that really doesn't go anywhere.

Second, there's the repetitious nature of Silverberg's backstory. If he told me one more time that Maximilianus III subdued the barbarians once and for all, I'm pretty sure I would have torn my hair out. He did this time after time after time. And I kept thinking, I know, I know, you told me this ten pages ago!.

That's another problem. Lots of telling, not a lot of showing. It made for weak storytelling.

But the thing that really bothered me the most was Silverberg's point of historical departure. He posited that the reason why the Roman Empire never fell is because Christianity never existed. Now I've got theological problems with that that I won't go into here simply because those reasons aren't the reason why my suspended disbelief kept trying to unsuspend itself. I know that historians have suggested that Christianity brought about the fall of the Roman Empire. Given that possibility, it's within the realm of reason to believe that a lack of Christianity would mean a longer lasting Empire. The merits of the argument are beyond the scope of this book review and I leave that particular debate to people with more abbreviations behind their names than I.

No, there are two major reasons why I didn't like this point of departure. The first has to do with the idea of trajectory. Silverberg removes Christianity from the historical scene by having the Exodus fail. No Exodus, he reasons, no Isreal. No Isreal, no Jews. No Jews, no Christianity.

So that might work, but my problem here is that that leaves 1,200 years (at least) where things would be substantially different. No Exodus, no kingdom of Israel, right? Well, that leaves a power vacuum in the ancient world that would have to be filled. Who knows what might have arisen in the land of Canaan. A Philistine Empire? Would Egypt, who was the nominal overlords of the region at the time, maintained their hold, thus allowing them to resist the Assyrians and Babylonians? Who knows?

Silverberg's premise of removing the Exodus and only removing Christianity is far-fetched to the point of ridiculousness. It's entirely possible that by undoing the Exodus, the Roman Empire might never have arisen. The butterfly theory and all that.

The second reason why this point of departure is so ridiculous to me is because of what Silverberg does in his introduction. He has two Roman historians meet and discuss ancient history and one of them says something along these lines: "Well, what if that Moses guy had succeeded? Well, then, a religion may have arisen, based on resurrection, that would have appealed to Roman society and radically changed our society."

Um, excuse me? That's an awfully big intellectual leap for someone to make. Too big of one, if you ask me. Sure, Silverberg is trying to explain what's missing, but that could have been made pretty clear in short order rather than with the ham-fisted way he did.

According to Silverberg's biography, he's an award-winning author. Quite frankly, based on this book, I can't imagine why and I don't really care to learn. For me, if I want to see some good counterfactual storytelling in this same vein, I'll re-read Harry Turtledove's Agent of Byzantium. Much better and not quite so ludicrous.

Honestly, I had to try to start this book three times before I was able to "get into" it. The apparent strangeness of Silverberg's Roman moral values and place names made it difficult to comprehend at first, but once I dug down and decided to finish it, I was extremely pleased by its twists and turns.
What other reviewers have found bothersome about this book I found to be its greatest strengths. When writing an alternative history, what are the rules? Why shouldn't we have a Renaissance (of sorts), or similar language development? Silverberg (I have always thought) is a SciFi author, so why not include elements of that genre? Not being of the Jewish faith, I cannot speak for the "offensiveness" of those elements of the story, but I can't help but think that someone would bring it up; like it or not, the histories of Jerusalem and Rome are intertwined, and with a name like Silverberg, how could he not make use of those themes?
I loved it. It took some time to get used to this different type of storytelling, but it was worth every penny.

I read this book because the plot idea, an alternative history of
the world without the fall of Rome, sounded interesting. Each
chapter is a snapshot in history, using the Roman dating system.
I would have liked to see a modern date as a reference to help me
keep track of my world vs the ficitonal world. I also had a
difficult time keeping track of all the characters.

Some things I didn't like about the plot:
Why was their a medieval period and a renaissance when there was
no dark ages?
What drove industrialization? Trains and automobiles just
appear, with no explanation of where or when they were invented.

The thing that kept me reading to the end:
The whole premise was interesting. How would the world be
different if Rome had not fallen? It is interesting to think
and read about.

When I saw this book at the library and read the synopsis on the book jacket, I thought it looked like a really interesting concept. I was expecting a story set roughly in the present in a vast all-encompassing Roman Empire that never fell. I wanted to see the differences of culture an technology and how they would be different in modern life if they had evolved out of such a mighty empire. However, what I got instead were several short stories set in a constantly decaying, but never quite falling, Roman Empire.

Despite being a little disappointed that this was a book of short stories, instead of what I had expected, I still thought it might be interesting to see some of the things that I mentioned above, as the Empire evolves. However, while a couple of the stories were pretty good, most were just ok, and a couple (including the last) were terrible. Instead of telling stories about the greatness of the Empire and how it expands throughout the years, and the technology that comes along with it, the stories are more about how the Empire just barely hangs on (or doesn't, temporarily) despite many factors that threaten it. And the technology that I thought would be particulary interesting was barely mentioned at all. There are passing mentions of a printing press and picture postcards, and some talk of building an elevator that is never realized, but no discussion of how technological advancements were made in this alternate version of history. I was also particularly disappointed by the fact that the technology that was mentioned in the stories pretty much corresponded to when those things came about in actual history. But I would have thought, that if the Roman Empire never fell, technology would have progressed at a slightly faster, if not much faster rate, especially considering how advanced the Romans seemed to be in such things. Also without the Dark Ages that followed the Empire's collapse, I would think things would have progressed further in that time. Finally, the most annoying thing about the book was that the last story did not seem to belong at all. It was not a story about the Empire, aside from being set in it, and was completely different from all the others in the book. It was also one of the shortest and probably the worst of the stories in the book.

I wouldn't recommend this book, although if you know what to expect going into it, you may enjoy it more then I did.

Basically a seried of vignettes, not a cohesive story at all, Roma Eterna falls victim to a couple of mistaken assumptions. The first of these is that without Judaeo-Christianity and Islam the Empire would have stood. The empire fell more from its own weight than any "outside" influences. The second, and, for me, much more glaring one, is Silverberg's assumption of an industrial revolution without any of the pre-conditions necessary for one. As stated by S.M. Stirling in his review of another work, without the Aquinan worldview adopted by post-medieval Christianity, there is no scientific or industrial revolution. The Romans were notoriously incurious about what made the world around them tick and their system of gods and goddesses had no rationality. Without those two elements, you have no reason or basis for the kind of systematic research which led to our world of today and simply cannot have the last third of the book. Still a nice read, but not anywhere close to Silverberg's best