Customer Reviews

The Romans: An Introduction (Peoples of the Ancient World)

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Antony Kamm has developed a solid reputation for being able to synthesize masses of material and make it understandable to the reader. This book is no exception, taking the reader from the legends of Rome's founding to the last pseudo-Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and the roughly 800 years in between. Nor does Kamm ignore the details of daily life, education, sex and marriage, food, money-lenders, games, and more that made up this rich and unique culture. A fine place to start, as shown in his title of THE ROMANS: AN INTRODUCTION.

I have been purchasing books on the Romans prior to my college studies and minor in history in the mid-1960's. Unless one has a certain author in mind, it can be very difficult to find a good, solid introductory book in this field. One of the better ones for me and one of the first I purchased was THE CIVILIZATION OF ROME by Pierre Grimal, however since that book is long out of print, this book, THE ROMANS, would be my next choice.

Will this 1995 book make you an expert on Rome, hardly that, but the average reader will come away with an umbrella knowledge encompassing aspects of the social, cultural, cosmological, art, and architecture, among other items, one could seemingly go on further, but the salient point being, read this book and you will receive a good, solid introduction to the Romans. This volume could be, and possibly is, used in some '101' introductory courses at the college level. As most people know, introductory courses are only basic survey courses, and this book more than fills a cursory requirement for an inspection of these people and their times.

If one is looking for a intro to the Romans a reader cannot do much better than Kamm's book for there are not too many introductory books in print available at the moment. I have my eye on a newer book due out in March, 2009, entitled THE ROMANS by Kevin McGeough but have yet to receive my advance copy. So for now I will still rely Professor Kamm's book.

Semper Fi.

I'm reviewing this as a professor of ancient history at at the college level. I can without a doubt that for a very lecture intensive course this could be a good book for students. However those lectures need to cover the political history extensively because I find a great amount of information lacking in that area in this book.

Literary and cultural developments are covered though not as historically as I'd like. I see this book fitting in more comfortably to a classics department than a history department for that reason. Of course, as I said above solid straight lectures can add a of the details back.

Otherwise this is an ok introduction but it leaves out a lot of the details and analysis which really are the core of history.

Kamm has written a compulsively readable and highly instructive volume on Ancient Rome. He is a talented writer and a great teacher.