Rome
Eternal City
Ferdinand Addis
Having read it
★★★☆☆
Ambitious in its scope and subjects but it’s approach is a little too much in the vignette style for me to help maintain my non-fiction/historical interest. But a good spread of moments that are interpreted and written about in a relaxed, non-academic way.
Being honest though, I began losing the interest I had in its direction beyond the fall of the Roman Empire, which is not to say recent history of Rome isn’t (or can’t be) interesting, it’s just not quite what I was expecting and so I skim read its last nine or so chapter!
A good passage
It was only after the fear of Carthage was removed that licentiousness and pride took root in Roman hearts, wrote one historian. Then the first tremors of discord ran through the citizenry. Nobles and people were divided. Each man took for himself what he could get. ‘And so the Republic, split into factions, was torn apart between them.’
A second good passage
Peace demanded certain compromises, and those compromises could only be rendered tolerable by a rapid reshaping of Italy’s historical imagination. The country’s imperial adventures under fascism, the years as an Axis power, the violence perpetrated on Italians by other Italians – all these uncomfortable histories were subordinated to the great story of resistance and liberation.