Customer Reviews

Rubicon

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4 star:		(1)
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This would be very high in my list of top ten books I have read in the last 20 years. Why? Because Tom Holland has brought the entire play of the fall of the Roman Republic to life. He portrays each of the main characters (and there are a lot of them) as real people, giving sound reasons as to who is friend and foe and why. Rather than telling the tale of each person as a separate story, all events are interwoven together. Typical of all politicians nobody is honest and nobody is entirely good either - though mostly they are all rich. Parallels abound between then and now, particularly with regards to big business and what drives government, though Mr Holland wisely never eludes to this and allows us to draw the conclusion. I was left wondering who was the real villian, the rest look just as bad as Caesar - and they all have their own agendas. All in all an excellent, eminently readable, un-put-downable book. Just a pity it isn't longer. I look forward to a sequel.

The Romans were arguably the most remarkable people in history, although having said that the Greeks would certainly give them a run for their money. Therefore it is no wonder that the Roman Republic is without doubt the most written about and who better to do the writing than Tom Holland, a historian who has a string of successful books behind him. This book certainly achieves what I am sure the author set out to do and that is to entertain and inform the reader at the same time, without boring the pants off them.

It is a sobering thought that what started out as a small community of people living among the marshes and hills of the area ended up as the greatest city of its time with the might and power to rule the known world. A city that had architects and engineers that could easily hold their own in today's modern world. The book paints a picture of Rome in its finest hour. This was the century of Julius Caesar , a man addicted to both power and glory. A man who crossed the Rubicon in a demonstration of both defiance and power.

A time of the great orator Cicero and Spartacus a slave come gladiator who dared to challenge the might of all Rome and briefly, but only briefly glimpsed success. Tom Holland brings to life all of these events and makes the people involved more than just names from long ago. He makes them into living people with likes and dislikes. Lovers of people and things and also the hatred within some of them and the lengths they were prepared to go to achieve their ambitions.

A book bursting with the facts of how people lived and loved in the most famous city in the known world and on the other side of the coin the ones who were continually striving to just to survive.

If you want one book to give you insight into how the Republic of Rome operated and evolved into an Empire, this is the book to get. Very well written. It is fascinating how much modern politics resembles the politics of ancient Rome, as engagingly and clearly described in this book. If you think Julius and Augustus Caesar came to power by military conquest alone (and that is how Republic became Empire), read this book to understand how wrong you are.

Rubicon is a history of the fall of the Roman Republic that reads like a novel, but seems to be based on pretty sound scholarship. Professional historians may quibble with the style, but this is an excellent overview for the average reader, dealing with a subject that is neglected in the school curriculum but seems very relevant to 21st century America.

Starting with a brief runthrough of the early history of Rome, the establishment of the Republic, and the gradual growth of an empire, Hammond gradually focuses in on the last century leading up to Julius Caesar's fateful crossing of the Rubicon and shows the gradual crumbling of values and institutions that allow one brilliant, popular demagogue after another to hijack the government and turn it to his own ends. Pre-emptive wars of "defense" are only one of the tactics that will sound very familiar.

I believe that some reviewers have objected to Hammond's use of "anachronisms," but I found this to be an effective, if not always precise, way to convey what was happening. After all, the fact that a name has only recently been given to "spin" doesn't mean that it hasn't been done for millennia.

This book's real strength, however, is in its portrayal of a huge cast of living, breathing human beings who grow and change over time. Pompey starts off looking like an obnoxious showoff, but his real love for his wives (which got him laughed at in a society even more macho than 20th century America) and his devotion to the Republic give him an air of tragic pathos. Cato is curmudgeonly but honorable to the end, and Hammond's portrait of Caesar projects a charm and ruthlessness that are both utterly calculated and extremely dangerous.

For anyone who wants to learn more about this fascinating era, whose parallels to our own can send chills down the spine, I highly recommend Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series.

The events and characters of Rubicon continue to haunt me weeks after I have read it. Tom Holland is a consummate storyteller. He explores the Roman political scene in all its complexity and renders it not only comprehensible but utterly thrilling. Not only can you not put this book down but it screams to be read again and again. Rivetting stuff!

The book is simply put ... an amazing read. There are few books that describe history in the color and richness the way Tom Holland has done. The book even though a beautiful work on history reads like fiction. And that is exactly what makes this book stand out from others.

What I got out of this book was a great feel for Rome. I never realized how little I understood about it until I read Rubicon. Nor did I understand how the conquests of one great leader marked the demise of an even greater empire. Tom Holland has chosen the best way of educating people - by writing history as if it were fiction, by describing Rome as a story told and by giving color and life to all its characters. The names of all the characters of Rome are introduced gradually and not as mere names that were born on a date and held a certain office, but as people with their own stories and agendas which all revolved around the Roman empire.

If you are the kind of person who wants great entertainment and a knowledge of history to boot - there is no better book than this.

Rubicon is a fascinating book that tackles the might (and ugliness) of the Roman Republic at the height of its power, before Julius Caesar's fateful crossing of the Rubicon into Rome to assert his power, and upset the foundations that the Republic was based on.

The Romans at the hight of their pomp are reconstructed magnificently by the author who tells not only the high political story of archly ambitious men - Sulla, Pompey, Caesar who sought immortality through conquest and political office; but also the day to day lives of ordinary Romans. For Rome in the early years of the Republic was not a clean, centrally heated paragon of classical architecture (this influence came later, through Caesar) but a ramshackle, winding city where excrement was frequently dumped on the lower people's heads.

As the blurb on this website says, the Romans displayed many of the features we can see inherited in our own generations. Their obsession with property (villas along the Via Sacra), the rank hypocrisy they displayed in political affairs, the worship of false idols and celebrities - gladiators, outlandish chefs and their relish of public intellectuals (i.e. Cicero) who, Malvolio like, gave a scholarly gloss to the citizen's most egregious prejudices and notions.

Then there is the gripping story of Caesar, rising to prominence as a young general in Gaul and as a consul in the Triumvirate, invading the Republic through illegally crossing the Rubicon in 49BC. This act led to his hero worship in some quarters of Rome, but caused civil war in the Republic. Ultimately, Caesar made the cardinal and classic error of believing too much in his own greatness - declaring himself dictator for life and suffering the fateful, and predictable consequences.

The rest of the Roman era - the Empire years, deserve similar treatment in gripping narrative style. But this book will do for starters.

The Roman Republic may have had many virtues in the period before this book opens; but as portrayed in this book, during its last century it takes some beating for its arrogance, hypocrisy, ceaseless competitiveness and ambition, measureless greed, envy, opportunist changing of sides, lack of principles, fickleness, debauchery, demagoguery, treachery, assassinations, lack of civic courage, brutality, thieving, bribery and corruption on a gigantic scale, vulgar display, and the crudest kind of aggrandisement both national and personal. I had only the most general knowledge of the period, and became completely lost following the treacherous manoeuvres of schemers called Caelius, Clodius, Catulus, Cethegus, and Curio whom I found hard to keep apart, or of who was married to whom. Rome resembled nothing so much as a nest of vipers, with Cato and Marcus Brutus being the only leading figures who retained their integrity. Rome's constitution still retained some old values: balance of power, frequent elections to every office, all designed to prevent any one citizen from becoming a dictator: but elections were frequently bought and at other times subject to violent intimidation and even murder.

The Romans thirsted for military glory and awarded triumphs to victorious generals; but they resented it if any general became too powerful. However, in the period covered by this book, the Senate was too often unable to curb the excess of power in the hands of individuals, afraid both of them and of the Roman poor, who were always prone to hero-worship any successful general or populist agitator. And of course in the end one general after another defied the constitution while pretending the save it, until in the end the Republic expired.

There are rounded portraits of the leading figures of the time - Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Caesar, Mark Anthony - all shown with their bad qualities - their ambitions, their vanities, and their intrigues - but whatever virtues they had are also acknowledged: the creative side of the dictator Sulla, for instance, the for the time unusually humane way Pompey treated conquered peoples, the occasional calculated clemency of Julius Caesar towards politicians he had defeated, the respect Cicero had for the law; and finally the genius of Caesar Augustus, whose merit, after a rise as unscrupulous, as calculating and as blood-stained as that of his predecessors, showed the wisdom to make the exhausted Romans feel that their old virtues and institutions had been restored, that the civil wars were over, that Roman armies would continue to expand the boundaries of Roman control - though all under his ultimate control.

This is a well-paced and fairly detailed book about the slow fall of the Roman Republic, but the author seems to persistently spin his rendition of events to favor traditionalists and aristocrats. Therefore Caesar's role in bringing down the Republic is heavily emphasized and decried, but the violent opposition to the Gracchi is made to seem natural.

The fact of the matter is that conservatives had a big hand in undermining the rule of law in Rome, and that resistance by all means necessary to social change had helped turn Rome into a city ruled, in the last instance, by force. This long, long before Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

It is possible to lay more blame on Caesar than many historians have done, but one shouldn't do it by ignoring or glossing over the crimes of conservatives and traditionalists.

The idea that average people need to know history, especially ancient Roman history, has fallen by the wayside in the last several decades. The problem this leads too, naturally enough, is that the people in a democracy loose site when their elected leaders start to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Roman history is filled with people who made mistakes, often times for all the right reasons. Caesar is such a personality. Caesar would contend that he was simply moving to protect the people of the Republic from what was extensive corruption in the systems that governed Rome.

Tyrants rarely come to power saying they are going to enslave the masses and restrict the rights of the average citizen. They always claim, and in many cases truly believe, that they are moving to protect the average men and women of the time. However, in attacking the rights of the powerful, they often end up also restricting the rights of everybody. -- Restriction of civil rights in order to protect and preserve them... this appears to lead to parallels with out own times.

To put to this another way, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

Even after the Republic had passed and the Empire was in full swing, there was still much to admire in the Romans. "To protect the weak and make humble the proud". Not a bad motto, and they even lived up to it from time to time.

Julius Caesar, in "crossing the Rubicon" didn't know that he was changing everything. The problem is that everything didn't happen on that day. Most events that lead to the Empire had already passed: Sulla's dictatorship had been a defacto empire; the Gracchus brothers had tried reform before and been slapped down -- hard and dead.

It is possible that any large scale nation state, given sufficient size and power, becomes an empire at some point. After all, if Rome, Britain, revolutionary France and other great nations couldn't avoid it that may mean that the only real hope is to embrace the beast and do it well while possibly making some good come from it.

This fine book provides a very good discussion of the transition period from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire.