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August 25, 2005
First Man in Rome
After finishing A Gladiator Dies Only Once I was in the mood for some good Roman historical fiction and I found it in Colleen McColloughs First Man in Rome, the first book in her Masters of Rome series. First Man follows the rise of Sulla to the Senate in Rome. It also follows the career of Sullas older brother in law, Gaius Marius as he becomes the first man in Rome. Gaius Marius leads armies against kingdoms in North Africa and barbarian tribes in Trans-alpine Gaul, while Sulla lives as a spy among the Germans and acts as a spy in Africa as well. Most of what I have read about Rome starts up around the time of Julius Caesar so this was a fresh change and I may listen to some of her other books in the series later on, but I only have access to abridged versions of the book on tape so I am undecided on how much effort to put into it. I really do not like unabridged versions of most books and in the version I just finished parts of the story and characters seemed to lack a lot of depth and detail.
I think Rome is probably the most interesting ancient culture to read about because it has such contrasting values: elections, trials, order, dignity, and laws along with dictators, slaves, gladiatorial combats, and unprovoked military invasions. It is hard to know who to root for in some of the Roman versus barbarians battles since it is not like Rome was morally superior to all of its enemies, excepting places like Carthage which practiced child sacrifice. Romes subjects were often better off in long run under its rule because culturally and technologically at least Rome often was far superior. As they said in Life of Brian
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?Of course if the subject happened to be a slave, who made up about a third of Romes subjects at some points in its history, then life could be very unpleasant and short if you ended up working in a mine or as food for an exotic animal from Africa in the arena.
Posted by Pete at August 25, 2005 06:01 PM
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