Jesus the man brought to light in Aslan's engrossing Zealot

From The Week of October 8th, 2013

Of all the forces that move humanity, few are as potent as mythology. Through its songs and sonnets, stories and parables, It gives reason to the unknown, it imbues the aimless with purpose, and it establishes a scaffolding upon which cultures can erect their histories and traditions. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, when most of the world knew nothing of the written word and the revelations of science, this was the most successful means by which to teach and to exchange ideas. As such, it is a vital step in the development of human civilization.

But mythology does have its price which becomes all-too-apparent in a world of literacy and discovery. For it inculcates in its practitioners, its adherents, a belief in falsehoods. It directs people to put their faith in fables that, at worst, never happened and, at best, bear only a passing resemblance to actual history. Worse, though, is mythology's tendency to bury historical truths under an avalanche of fairy tales which makes finding the truth and dispensing it to the masses a herculean task. Fortunately, our world possesses scholars capable of unearthing those truths and assembling them for public consumption. Reza Aslan's effort here is one such success.

Rushing like a tide out of the mists of time, Christianity has spent 2,000 years covering much of the known world. Though it has branched into different doctrines, different schools, the key shibboleths of its origin story remain the same, that Jesus Christ is the savior of humanity, that he descended to Earth to spread the word of the Christian god, and that he allowed himself to die for the sins of God's children. Christians understandably focus their energies on the Christ, the divine spirit of what Paul called the Risen Christ. But what of the Christ of the Flesh? What of the man? Who was he?

Working from the Gospels and the histories of the Romans, the only written accounts of events during Jesus' life, Mr. Aslan assembles a fascinating if fragmented portrait of this most transformative figure. Over this most engrossing, 300page history lesson, which devotes nearly as much time to the setting of Jesus' life as it does to the man himself, we come to learn that Jesus of Nazareth did exist, that he did claim the mantle of the Messiah, that he did accrue a following in Judea, a Roman territory, and that he was crucified by the Romans for sedition. We are introduced to Jesus' siblings, which were numerous; his circumstances, which were meager; his worldview, which was inescapably Jewish; and his mission, which was nothing short of the overthrow of the world order as he knew it. But more than this, we come to comprehend some measure of the man himself, an individual possessed of charisma, leadership and a willingness to throw off everything he knew in the achievement of his goal.

To scholars of the Historical Christ, much of Zealot's revelations are already apparent. But to those who only know the myth and not the history, it is nothing short of a bomb dropped on our preconceptions. For Mr. Aslan spells out, clearly and inescapably, that Jesus of Nazareth was a brown, Jewish, foreign-born socialist, a truth that makes laughable the literally and figuratively white-washed depictions of the myth we've come to know. Moreover, Jesus of Nazareth went well beyond even the modern-day conception of socialism. For this was not a man interested in the redistributions of wealth with which we are familiar. He aimed to invert the world order, to make the first last, the rich poor, the well-fed starving, a worldview that, while in some sense vengeful, adds valuable three-dimensionality to a man made two-dimensional by both the passage of time and the yearnings of his followers.

Zealot is by no means a perfect work. Though Mr. Aslan is often careful to back up his assertions with contemporaneous accounts, his portrait of Jesus does not quite match his own assertions of the man's noble character. The author frequently hails Jesus of Nazareth for his courage and his charisma, and yet, other than his capacity to accrue followers, we see few examples of these virtues. Moreover, upending the world order in such a dramatic way hardly seems laudatory. On the contrary, it appears, albeit from the impossibly comfortable remove of 2013, to be a recipe for disaster. The author's refutations of the mythologies surrounding Paul and Pontius Pilate are laser sharp and backed up with numerous examples of the absurd ways in which time and belief have distorted the deeds of both men, but the case for a commendable Historical Jesus remains thin.

However, let this in no way diminish Zealot's power. This is bound to be a controversial work. For it attacks, directly and obliquely, the stories uncounted generations have told themselves about the most famous man in human history. It possesses the wisdom, the clarity, the rigor and the wherewithal to withstand such assaults. I can think of few works of literature that better exemplify the written word's power to distill and dispense history, truth and a lifetime's worth of learning. (4/5 Stars)

The Last Lost World by Lydia & Stephen Pyne

From The Week of October 22, 2012 As much as the occasional upheavals in our lives may suggest otherwise, most of our days are lived in a stable,predictable environment. Variables like the weather do their best to roil this consistent brew, but these represent only a handful of chaotic forces agitating within an assembly of normality. Everything from the composition of the atmosphere we breathe to the menagerie of the organisms we come across are indistinguishable from conditions 50 years ago, 500 years ago, perhaps even 5,000 years ago. What we know of the world has been the world since humans discovered agriculture ten millennia ago. But has the Earth forever been this way? In the thousands of millennia prior to the rise of humanity, was the planet then as we think of it now? And if not,just how different was it from what we know so well? Ms. Pyne and Mr. Pyne attempt to explain this muddled text.

Beginning more than two million years ago, the Pleistocene is the most recent of Earth's periodic ice ages, each of which have profoundly transformed the planet's climate and the creatures that live within it. While Warm temperatures accelerate the propagation of most species, cold temperatures, especially temperatures which leave large chunks of the planet covered in ice, are deadly to them, making food far too scarce for most species to survive. This affect is particularly hard on larger species which, in dying off, open the door to smaller mammals who are free to flourish in this, at least for them, new and less dangerous environment. Though humans have adapted remarkably well to these new conditions, they are not alone. Animals from bears to elephants have weathered these same interglacial storms, putting their paws, hooves and muzzles into the ring to be the new apex predators. However, unfortunately for them, tooth and claw, feather and fir have lost out to the hairless ape who has used his mind to conquer and control all that lays before him.

Of course, looking back millions of years to divine the truths of the planet's past is not easy. It relies largely on the finding and the proper studying of fossils which can tell us much about not only the kinds of creatures that once walked the Earth but the climate they walked in and the enemies they fought in order to survive. The Last Lost World takes the reader on a journey through some of these fossils and the caves that have sheltered them for millennia. Through this process, interesting facts about the Pleistocene and our role within it are revealed and carefully examined, inspected for bias and finally judged based on their validity in hopes of making clearer our lamentably opaque picture of Earth's many and varied pasts.

Though their intentions are good and their studiousness admirable, The Last Lost World is in every way a pedantic nightmare. Ms. Pyne and Mr. Pyne might well be excellent academics and admirable analysts of fossil records, but they have assembled a disastrous study of the Pleistocene that concerns itself infinitely more with the study of the era rather than the era itself. Yes, some species, like the cave bear, are touched on. And certainly, they pause in their navel-gazing long enough to elaborate on the missing links in humanity's evolutionary chain. But these are merely rest stops on a journey into self-flagellation. For our authors here are consumed by the human biases inherent in defining the Pleistocene and in how these biases reflect more broadly on humanity itself, topics which, I'm sure, hold academic interest for some, but surely not for the layity.

The Last Lost World casts wretchedly little light upon the mysteries and the accepted truths of Earth's ice ages, their characteristics, their durations, even their mechanics. There is certainly room enough here for a discussion of scientific methodologies, especially in the age of climate deniers. Good science is thoroughly tested science. But instead of being treated to a wise and warning-filled coda, the reader is bombarded with a rambling dissertation on the nature of scientific classification, the ruminations on which are torturously extended out into a discussion about human nature that only an academic could love. I left the work knowing very little about the actual Pleistocene which was ostensibly the subject of this ponderous work.

Profoundly flawed. Wikipedia was far more informative. (1/5 Stars)

Pompeii by Mary Beard

From The Week of September 10, 2012 The past is handed down to us through images frozen in time. For as much as literature can teach us about the nuts and bolts of historical eras, only images have the power to captivate our imaginations, to depict, with a stroke, both the continuity of human need and the mutability of human custom. With shocking ease, they can declare to us the realities of life so often buried by the portentousness of the word. But such images go beyond tapestry and graffiti. They go beyond art. Some are bestowed upon us by fate and physics, both of which combined, with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, to gift to us a town frozen in time, a town Ms. Beard thoroughly reconstructs in her vivid snapshot of this most infamous Roman town.

A town of merchants and slaves, citizens and gladiators, Pompeii was, until 79 AD, a fairly typical town in the heart of the Roman Empire. Filled with shops and brothels, conflict and politics, it operated within the great shadow cast by the imperial capital at Rome. But though its significance may have been vanishingly small relative to the historical heart of the Republic, this did not dissuade its people from availing themselves of its public baths, of congregating in its numerous bars, of praying in its temples and attending its numerous parties. The town even possessed a 20,000-seat coliseum at which its gladiators fought and died for the pleasure of its residents. For generations, the loving and the lovelorn, the fortunate and the foolish, packed its streets and lived under its roofs until, one day, it all came to an end.

A tempestuous region that had been recently shaken by earthquakes powerful enough to damage homes, it would've come as little surprise to the wise that Pompeii was in line for another temblor. But none of them could've imagined that this latest disaster would be the last as they knew it. On that fateful day in 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted, angrily dumping upwards of 20 feet of ash onto Pompeii's streets, burning into the souls of its inhabitants and into the walls of its structures, scars that would outlast the empire, to be rediscovered and chronicled centuries on by historians eager for a glimpse at a place and a time enshrouded in legend. The volcanic holocaust preserved all from the trivial to the portentous while leaving, for scholars, tantalizing gaps in the context necessary to properly place such evidence. It is a town millennia gone. And these are its bones.

Though at times beset by a scholarly dryness, Pompeii is, in the main, a rewarding journey through a town preserved in volcanic amber. Ms. Beard, a professor of Classics at Cambridge, attacks her subject with passion and skepticism. The former permeates the work, enlivening her summations of Pompeiian life which range from food to sex, casts to coins. The latter, meanwhile, is the wise lens through which Ms. Beard views her archaeological delvings. For while others are willing to draw exciting but hasty conclusions from scrawls on the walls of brothels and from bowls on the bartops of shops, she holds herself to a higher, more admirable standard which prevents her from misleading the reader down the path to supposition. This wariness is most welcome, not only because the author presents it with deftness and humor but because of ancient Pompeii's place in modern culture, a fascinating, engrossing tourist trap at which many tall tales can be spun for personal gain.

There's no avoiding that the work, at times, stalls, burdened by too many names and too many customs unfamiliar to those of us who have not spent a lifetime studying antiquity. Nonetheless, when Pompeii shines, it does so brightly, reminding us of the temporary nature of custom and tradition. For what seems to us both obvious and permanent seems to those who follow us strange and ephemeral. This is a welcome lesson, one that opens our eyes to the foreign and compels us to view it with as much legitimacy as we do the familiar.

A pleasing if uneven journey. (3/5 Stars)

How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

From The Week of August 13, 2012

As much as the march of history may appear to have steadily progressed towards the present, this is a false impression created by the ways in which we learn of our past. We are taught that history is linear, an impression re-enforced by the memorizing of dates and events, people and politics. We're told of the milestones in humanity's development, moments in time in which we came to key truths that helped us to achieve the now and that, without which, the now would not exist. But this assumes that the now was not only the goal all along -- absurd given that no one in our past could have imagined our present --, but that the now which we enjoy is somehow better, or more valorous than the alternative, that we should be rooting for the now that we have over the now that we'll never know. History is a muddle, full of incidents and forces which grind together to grudgingly, and eventually, produce the present. Unfortunately, this is not a view of history shared by Mr. Cahill.

When, in the fifth century, the Roman Empire in the west fell to the Germanic hordes, civilization in Europe was all-but extinguished. The city of Rome, which had been, for a thousand years, the spiritual home of the most advanced society west of China, was sacked and burned, its treasures stolen, its people vanquished, its temples toppled. A light that had shined over Europe since the height of the ancient Greeks had gone out, plunging into a wild and savage darkness a continent of people who would be generations dead before Charlemagne, in the eighth century, ould restore something like order to a world gone to seed.

Three centuries is an eternity, far too long for ancient writings to survive and be handed down to a civilization restored. Such works would have quickly rotted away, consigning their troves of knowledge to the illegible tides of time. Who, then, preserved those works of ancient literature? Who preserved for Charlemagne and his descendents, Cicero and Caesar, Plato and Aristotle? Who kept undammed the river of culture forged by the ancients for the betterment of man? According to Mr. Cahill, this honor goes to Irish monks who, inspired by St. Patrick, toiled fearlessly and relentlessly, in stony scriptoriums perched on the edge of the Northern Sea. Charged by faith and the hunger for knowledge, they devoted their lives to letters and illuminations, labors that would eventually gift to a revived Europe the wisdom of antiquity.

In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Mr. Cahill, an American historian, contends that our civilization would not exist were it not for the efforts of a band of Irish monks to preserve ancient thought. He points out that, had Europe stayed any longer in its self-imposed darkness, it might well have become Islamic, unable to stand up to the existential threat from the east. But while this may have been a possible consequence of losing the knowledge of the ancients that was then used to fuel a European revival, it is an argument that also supposes that ours is the proper civilization. It rejects the idea that another, better civilization might not have risen to take its place. Moreover, it depends upon the idea that this ancient knowledge could not have come from another source, like, say, Byzantium where efforts were also made to preserve ancient knowledge.

Mr. Cahill believes in the idea that history has nexus points, consequential moments in which history is profoundly shaped. And though this theory has merit, it is a stretch to apply that view to this case. The author assumes that this preserved knowledge was vital to a European revival when this is impossible to know. And if we cannot know the degree to which such knowledge influenced Europe in centuries subsequent to its preservation, then we cannot properly value the preservation itself. Yes, the preservation of knowledge is invariably to the good. For it takes time and good fortune to have profound realizations about the world. Preserving those revelations is vital if subsequent generations are to be able to fly higher than their ancestors. But How The Irish Saved Civilization doesn't make this argument. It goes well beyond to make a point for which it has little evidence.

How The Irish Saved Civilization is not without merit. It is an entertaining biography of Augustine and St. Patrick, throwing in for good measure a summation of the fall of the Romans and the rise of Charlemagne. But its failure to convince us of the validity of its central conceit hamstrings the work. Interesting but challenged... (2/5 Stars)

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

From The Week of May 21, 2012

Of humanity's many pursuits, none can claim to have changed our world more than war. Since civilization began, it has forged nations, imposed cultural norms, popularized languages and redistributed wealth. It has created some empires while it ended others; it has elevated some gods while it smashed the idols of others. It has been the armory for technological advancement and the arsenal for democratic rights. For good and ill, for better and worse, war and its fickle fortunes have shaped all that we know and all that we hold dear. Few incidents in history provide as vivid an example of this principle than the great Peloponnesian war. Mr. Kagan's account demonstrates.

Launched in 431 BCE by an insignificant skirmish between minor players in ancient Greece and ended in 404 BCE with the destruction of the Athenian navy and the subsequent fall of the empire that floated it, the Peloponnesian War was a conflict that pitted the Delian League, lead by democratic Athens, against the Peloponnesian League, captained by oligarchical Sparta in a war for all of Greece. Though hostilities between these rival forces were halted on several occasions, their 27-year grudge match still managed to claim the lives of thousands of combatants, the freedoms of dozens of city states, the honorable civilizing customs of the Homerian age and the internal economies of all of the Greek powers. It began in Spartan fear and Athenian hope; it ended in the fall of Greece and the rise of Rome. Greece, with its philosophers and its innovators, its statesmen and their ideas, would never again occupy the center stage of human existence.

From Pericles to Lysander, from the tangled webs of Athenian politics to the exacting discipline of Spartan life, The Peloponnesian War is Mr. Kagan's simplified account of perhaps the most consequential conflict of the ancient world. Before Octavian and Brutus, before Caesar and Pompey, before Rome, there was Greece, a loose confederation of remarkable thinkers and warriors, statesmen and laborers who, at the height of their powers, drove the mighty Persian empire into the sea. They gave us science and mat, philosophy and culture. But this wisdom, this strength, was not enough to keep them from being tipped, by rivalry and envy, into barbarism, chaos and the end of all they held dear. Step by doomed step, Mr. Kagan reveals the events that cast Greece into shadow, paving the way for the rise of a new and familiar world.

Though plagued at times by the 2,500 years of change that stand between us and the apocalyptic events it chronicles, The Peloponnesian War is a challenging and rewarding read. Mr. Kagan, the Stirling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University, successfully translates ancient disputes and customs into a language comprehensible in the 21st century. Consequently, many of the actors in this most ancient drama spring to life from the pages of his dry text, fighting for dominance and victory in a warrior's world. But as much as the work lends skills and motives to individuals otherwise lost to the vicissitudes of time, its most enduring contribution comes from the extent to which it chronicles a war that seems shockingly similar to far more recent conflicts, particularly, World War I which was also launched by a relatively insignificant conflict and which was continued despite the participants being fully aware that it might well destroy the fabric of their societies. Such were the needs of honor that this reality seems to have been made secondary to the thirst for victory.

For all its value,The Peloponnesian War is troubled by a notable flaw. While, yes, Mr. Kagan is forced to reconstruct this most ancient war from only a handful of incomplete sources, he does very little to supplement the readers knowledge of the actors here with his own scholarly expertise. For instance, though he spends some time draping Pericles in honors and greatness, he does very little to explain why the Athenian statesman was held in such high regard. Thus, while we come to understand how these men and the powers they helmed came to rack and ruin, we understand them only shallowly, their motivations discarded in favor of seemingly endless rounds of negotiations, machinations and war. Moreover, Mr. Kagan does little to relate these events to our times, an addition that would have been decidedly welcome in a tome this long.

Fascinating work, but burdened by its relentless focus on the facts of the war in lieu of valuable context. (3/5 Stars)

Echoes of The Ancient Skies by E.C. Krupp

From The Week of April 16, 2012
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As much as we are motivated by our immediate and instinctive drives for food and sex, shelter and purpose, our lives are fundamentally shaped by our need to understand the world around us. Why are there rivers of water and stars in the sky? Why do some years bring droughts and others monsoons? Why does day give way to night and night day? Because modern humans can draw upon generations of preserved knowledge, and then fertilize that foundation with more modern theories of science, we have hard answers to these questions, answers based on empirical data and serious observation. We know that water chases gravity and that the sky is illuminated by light from distant suns. We understand that weather patterns are subject to cycles and that our planet's rotation gives it a 24-hour day-night cycle. But what if we didn't know these things? What if we had no schools to teach us, no books to impart knowledge? How would we explain the world then? In this, his study of the relationship ancient cultures had with astronomy, Mr. Krupp explains.

From Babylonian sky gods to Mayan snake deities, from Egyptian pyramids to Incan temples, Mr. Krupp summons the symbology, the calendars, the gods and the monuments that Earth's ancient cultures used to explain the world around them, using them to weave an exquisite tapestry that explains how ancient cultures viewed their place in their bewildering world. Lacking anything like a modern comprehension of the universe, and devoid of any scientific method by which to acquire that knowledge, every proto-civilization, from the Chinese to the Celtic, from the Indian to the Native Indian, was kept from finding non-mystical answers to the question of their origins. And so they turned to metaphor and story to supply the necessary truths. They invented pantheons of gods and spirits, investing them with the knowledge of the omnipotent and then built temples to them as a means of communicating with them and beseeching their indulgence in a world often marked by turmoil and mercilessness.

This worldview, so rich with mythology and tale, heroes and demons, both enriched and defined the lives of those who occupied these ancient cultures. They believed themselves to be playing a tiny part in a cosmic game whose significance was never questioned. After all, to question would be to invite the scorn of the beings who brought the rains that fertilized the crops, who brought the sun out of night, and who kept the seas from consuming the earth. To go against them would not only be folly, it'd be the end of everything they knew.

Echoes of The Ancient Skies is a delightful and engrossing expose of the intense, personal relationships ancient cultures had with their gods and their skies. Mr. Krupp has managed that most rare of literary feats, marrying an academic history with a vital narrative to create an enduring work that enlightens as much as it entertains. With chapters on symbols and rituals, temples and gods, calendars and ceremonies, the author revives a half dozen ancient cultures and describes in marvelous detail how they constructed a logical world without any understanding of how that world actually functioned. In this, he reveals not only how devoted humans are to uncovering the roots of their origins, but the phenomenal extent to which they can and will construct rich narratives that connect them with a universe they can barely comprehend. This wonderful journey is only slightly marred by a seriously dated conclusion, the only point at which the work shows its nearly 30 years of age.

There is no one way for humans to be. Even today, we believe in different stories and metaphors, using them to wire us into a broader world, a larger plan. Over the centuries, those beliefs have come and gone a thousand times, leaving behind only a single constant. We always will search for answers, to our origins and to the universe that has been our cradle. The gods, even the constellations, will change, but the drive remains. Echoes of The Ancient Skies is a beautiful exemplar of this truth about our fundamental nature. And this is what allows the work to transcend a simple, archaeological discourse.

Sharp and compelling to the end... Required reading for anyone even passingly interested in our cultural evolution. (4/5 Stars)

Elixir by Brian Fagan

From The Week of April 09, 2012

Why do we treasure that which is rare and take for granted that which is plentiful? Humans are creatures blessed with sufficient powers of reasoning to comprehend that, so long as a resource is finite, its value should be determined by its utility, not its scarcity. A limited supply is just that, a limited supply. If millions of years are required to make more of what we use, then we best not spend all that we have unless we wish to go without. This is fairly simple logic, and yet we continue to save our fondest regard for that which is rarest and squander that which is not, obsessed by the notion of possessing the last sliver of the available pie while paying no mind to the unavoidable truth that, in some way, we require all of Earth's finite resources to sustain ourselves. This is Mr. Fagan's eminently sensible argument in this, his sweeping study of the history of water.

For billions of years, it has flowed across the surface of our world, chasing gravity while participating in an environmental cycle essential for our existence. It has carved out rivers and streams, created spectacular lakes and valleys. It has born on its breast the building blocks of life, implanting them on distant shores. It has made possible all that we hold dear. It is water. And, today, it is everywhere, so ubiquitous that most of us in the developed world give not a moment's thought to wasting it. However, it was not always thus.

Before the advent of modern technology, before public works projects built dams and tapped underground reservoirs, our ancestors, from Africa to Mesopotamia, from China to Mexico, depended upon the weather to grant them water for their survival. This precious resource was so scarce at times that temples were erected to gods who might have some sway over temperamental climates that brought droughts as often as deluges. Water was considered sacred, a worthy commodity for the swearing of oaths.

But then man discovered agriculture. He learned how to find water and spread it across his fields to grow yet more food, allowing the population to expand, allowing for the advancement of science, allowing for the discovery of yet more ways of cultivating the land and harnessing the watery discharge of glaciers and lakes, springs and aquifers. With these advancements came yet more people, with more ideas, moments of insight that would ignite civilization. Water taps replaced the fallen temples and yet another resource became a means to our end.

From the utility of Mesopotamian wadis to the grandeur of Roman aqueducts, from religion to imperialism, Elixir is a history of water and its cultivation. Mr. Fagan reaches back into the dark depths of our history in order to describe the dozens of ingenious methods our ancestors used to capture and store this most vital of life's lubricants. In doing so, he pulls back the curtain on a dozen dead civilizations, restoring them temporarily to life, commemorating them for their ingenuity. Each effort, each invention, becomes a brick in the wall of progress that culminates in a modern day world that, thanks to the pleasures of excess, has forgotten the preservational lessons of earlier eras, squandering that which we cannot make again.

In this, Mr. Fagan's history becomes a rather pointed critique of the cavalier attitude we have adopted towards water, a resource vanishing at increasingly rapid rates thanks to the explosive expansion of the human population. What will we do when the very stuff of life, becomes too scarce to be handed round? Will thirsty societies simply close up shop and quietly go into the night without so much as a whimper? Or will they fight for their survival, deploying all the destructive tools necessary to secure their continued existences? In light of our warlike history, the latter is all but a certainty. What sort of world, what manner of civilization, will be left behind by the water wars of the near future?

This is a most thorough history of a most underappreciated resource. Diamonds and gold will not sustain us. They cannot quench our thirst or water our crops. Life is filled with baubles, trinkets, in which we invest so much pride. All this while the water that sustained us is used to carry away our waste. Elixir is as revelatory as it is complete, as enlightening as it is frightening. Ours is an uncertain future. (4/5 Stars)

The Great Fire of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins

From The Week of March 05, 2012

What are legends? Are they apocrypha? Compelling stories that survive to the present day by dint of their entertainment value. Or are they allegories? Embellished, yes, but tales that nonetheless reflect the accepted truths of the times that birthed them. Perhaps legends are both. After all, with so much of history's facts lost to the rigors of time, we have no way of knowing if they were sparked by haters, self-aggrandizers, or even by those seeking to speak truths about the discredited, the wronged. As we lack a time machine with which to seek out the evidence that could convert legend into truth, they will remain just that, legends, funny stories that enliven our culture. That is, for most of us. Not so for Mr. Dando-Collins who, here, takes up the task of getting to the bottom of one of history's most memorable scandals. His detective work does not fail to entertain.

During its 2,000 years of cultural and political prominence, the city of Rome has suffered many disasters and indignities. It has had its treasures looted, its women raped, its buildings flattened and its streets rubbled. Some of these tragedies have even befallen it numerous times across the countless generations. As such, the great fire that all-but-consumed it in the year 64 AD might well have lapsed into history, indistinguishable from any other episode of destructive misfortune, were it not for the enduring image that has come down to us of emperor Nero fiddling while the capital of the world, his capital, burned. But such is the power of this symbol of authoritarian indifference that this legend has survived nearly two millennia, coloring both our impressions of the man and his empire. After all, it seems a fitting metaphor for the enduring political chaos that would follow in the wake of his death.

But did Nero actually fiddle while Rome burned? Mr. Dando-Collins, historian and commenter on all things ancient Rome, says no. For not only was the fiddle not introduced to Rome until decades after the great fire, the first account that makes reference to this unforgivable transgression was written more than a century after Nero's death; plenty of time for a cruel story to become accepted truth. So why the legend? What forces caused Nero's reputation to be so low that people would imagine he could be so cruel? Mr. Dando-Collins reveals that Nero did not know how to sell himself to his warlike people. For not only was it common knowledge that Nero had his domineering mother slain, he did little to hide his self-identity as a bisexual artist who knew nothing of the ways of war. More over, he may have only been tolerated by the Roman people because he kept grain prices low and because he was the last descendant of Julius Caesar. Without these virtues propping up his reign, Nero, that creature so unlike them, might well have fallen long before his city was destroyed by an epic week-long inferno that ruined a capital and brought low the most powerful man in the world.

Writing with his characteristic brashness, The Great Fire of Rome is Mr. Dando-Collins at his sardonic best. An avid chronicler of Roman history, he is able to summon the best virtues of narrative and academic history, applying both to his work. As a result, they are invariably fast-paced, compelling and informative investigations of the key moments in the chronology of ancient Rome. Here, he rescues Nero from the flames his critics have sought to consign him to, contending that there is plenty of evidence to indicate that Nero was a decent man who was poorly prepared for a challenging time. His good intentions, as evidenced by his numerous efforts at public works, were clear. And yet his artist's spirit was a poor match for the pains and pleasures of ruling a martial people. This awkward marriage eventually lead to attempts on Nero's life which radicalized him into a tyrant.

In virtually every respect, The Great Fire of Rome is a success. It leaves us with a vivid portrait of Nero, an extensive description of the fire that overtook his city, and the blaze's politically thorny aftermath which eventually lead to the emperor's downfall. However, Mr. Dando-Collins is unconvincing in his attempt to argue that the fire of Rome was a huge turning point in Roman history. His case, that Nero's rule would have turned out differently without it appears to ignore the longterm trend towards nihilism gripping the empire, even at this time. The general discontent and the lust for power would have been there with or without the fire. The inferno was merely an accelerant for an already healthy burn.

Regardless, this is narrative history at its most entertaining. (4/5 Stars)

Rubican by Tom Holland

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Of the thousands of nations that have risen and fallen in human history, only a special few have shaken off the yoke of mediocrity to expand into superpowers, states of unrivaled might capable of engendering fear and envy in all those who must consort and compete with them. These superpowers, past and present, have left legacies of culture and science, industry and technology, that have nourished their descendants. However, they have left behind warnings as well, stories of economic, political and personal excess that helped to ignite their downfalls.

Perhaps each superpower is unique unto itself, a singular entity enlivened by a singular people and plagued by singular problems, in which case autopsying the corpses of past superpowers is pointless. But what if all superpowers are fundamentally the same? They are, after all, populated and driven by humans, animals with the same genes, the same evolutionary histories, the same weaknesses. If they are all fundamentally the same, then history is endowed with powers to predict the future. In which case, current superpowers should take note of Mr. Holland's Rubicon for it has encapsulated the fall of freedom.

Though Rome managed to remain a republic for more than five centuries before collapsing into empire, its ultimate and destructive fate, argues Mr. Holland, a British author, was written into its very nature. Rome was founded on the notion that no one man is worthy of divine or monarchical exultation, that, while talent may be found to run deeper in some than in others, the most that man may aspire to be is first among his fellows. To reach any higher is to invite both tyranny and the wrath of the gods. This idea sustained Rome for centuries, working well enough to keep the republic alive. But when a succession of foreign enemies troubled Rome, causing its leading lights to adopt increasingly desperate measures to counter what they considered to be existential threats, this noble idea was first tested and then shattered by the desire among Romans for a hero to arise and save the republic in its darkest hours.

In the last 200 years of the Roman republic, many men vied for the honor of being Rome's savior. First came the Gracchi, brothers who attempted to reform Rome from within its existing institutions. But when the system stifled them, it fell to Rome's military heros to bring change. Marius and Sulla fought for and over Rome, causing a bloody civil war that laid down an example of dictatorial rule that Pompey Magnus and Julius Caesar happily followed. Sixty years of bloody, internal conflict, of plots and counter plots, of dictators and disbanded senates that finally culminated in the assassination of Julius Caesar, the end of the republic and the rise of a new Rome under Augustus, its last savior. These events leave us with one unavoidable conclusion; those who fought to save the Republic ended up destroying it.

Rubicon is a vivid history of the final century and a half of the Roman Republic told through the deeds of its prime movers. Mr. Holland's lively prose keeps the reader thoroughly engaged while he conveys a wealth of information on Rome's culture and customs, its religions and institutions, its seductions and its sins. He pleasingly balances the portraits of his Roman actors against the kings and rebels who threatened them from every side. But perhaps his greatest achievement, here, is in conveying the extent to which Romans eventually lost faith in their government and their constitution.

We hold our most treasured laws to be sacred and inviolate because to break them is to end their power forever. If the rule of law is suspended even once, the people will never be the same. For even when the rule of law is restored, they will not believe in it for they know that whenever the next crisis strikes, the rule of law will be suspended once more and they will suffer the consequences. There are certain truths and ideals that cannot be trampled without being broken. Unfortunately for Rome, powerful aristocrats, glory-seeking military heroes, and the corrupted politicians who enabled them both, succeeded in trampling all of Rome's sacred ideals. In doing so, they fractured their republic into warring factions while simultaneously draining away the people's faith in her institutions. War, death, decay, dissolution... Societies cannot exist without the faith of its citizens.

Though this is history at its grimmest, it is lively and superbly told. Mr. Holland does breeze over some of the more earth shattering events in Rome's final decades, but an excellent primer for anyone seeking to understand why Rome is so often compared to the United States. Similarities abound... Well-done. (4/5 Stars)

The Ides by Stephen Dando-collins

From The Week of October 03, 2011

Our world has seen popes murdered and rulers hung, saints butchered and presidents assassinated, but no killing has captured the minds, or excited the pens, of historians quite like that of Julius Caesar. Cut down at the prime of his power, the life of this remarkable Roman has been memorialized by kings and scholars, warriors and playwrights, elevated into legend by the passage of two-thousand years and countless civilizations. But though it may be history's most famous murder, do we actually know what happened? Do we grasp the motivations which drove Brutus and his cohorts to such drastic and fateful actions? Mr. Dando-Collins thinks not.

Drawing upon all the available sources, The Ides is Mr. Dando-Collins' attempt to reconstruct the day of Caesar's murder, March 15th, 44 BC, a day that began with portents and ended with the death of the dictator of Rome though the traditional accounts get it mostly right with regard to the identities of Caesar's murderers -- a band of pro-republican senators lead by his friend Marcus Junius Brutus --, and rightly finger the where -- the Roman Forum, the heart of Roman government --, the why, the how, and the fallout, argues the author, are much more contentious. For one thing, historians has largely turned its admiring eye from Caesar's sins, preferring to think of him as a great man of history. And yet, Julius Caesar was a tyrant who used his position as the governor of a province of the Roman Republic to gain fame and fortune by conquering Gall. These military expeditions, which were not sanctioned by Rome, earned him enmity from the senate, enmity that Caesar leveraged into a Roman civil war in which he was victorious. Having killed his greatest rivals for power, Caesar appointed himself dictator of Rome for life, the king of a so-called republic.

Caesar's authoritarianism gave birth to the conspiracy to kill him. The liberators, as they termed themselves, hoped to strike a blow for the Roman Republic by killing Caesar and handing political power back to the Roman senate. But while the murder was carried off, and while the Roman public initially supported the liberators, events soon turned against Caesar's murderers when, with the reading of Caesar's will, Antony revealed to the public that Caesar had left each citizen within the city at the time of his death a substantial sum of money. With public opinion swaying against them, the liberators fled, hoping to raise armies and excise, as a cancer from the body of Rome, Antony and the young Octavian, Caesar's lieutenant
and Caesar's rightful heir, Unable to exploit the enmity between Antony and Octavian, Brutus and his cadre were ultimately overwhelmed, their armies slaughtered by the forces commanded by the two, rising autocrats. These defeats forever swept away true, republican rule in Rome and converted antiquities greatest republic into a powerful and voracious empire.

The Idesis an admirable reconstruction of Caesar's death, its aftermath and the consequences the murder had for Rome. But while the author brings some clarity to specific points about the murder and rightfully re-focuses our attention upon Caesar's autocratic actions, he falls into the same trap of many of his sources. There are far too many declarative statements here for a factual account of a murder that happened 2,000 years ago and for which we have no physical evidence. All Mr. Dando-Collins has to go on are the various accounts of that murder, cross-referenced to extract some kind of composite truth. But a composite truth is not truth. The author never speaks to this distinction, preferring to represent his account as the authoritative version of a murder that occurred more than 80 generations prior to his birth. Notwithstanding this arrogance, The Ides is an informative look at the men who, in their attempt to liberate Rome from Caesar's authoritarian control, wound up catalyzing the fall of the very republic they loved so much, their deaths surrendering it to empire.

Educational and entertaining, The Ides is a thorough account of a pivotal moment in western history. Well worth the read, even if it must be taken with a full measure of skeptic's salt. (3/5 Stars)

The Birth of Classical Europe by Simon Price & Peter Thonemann

From The Week of September 26, 2011

Every nation has its historical narrative, a story that both explains its origins and justifies its mores. These narratives weave the tapestry of the national culture,cohering it around a handful of core beliefs that bind the nation's citizens in common enterprise. For instance, the origin story of the United States, that it was a country founded on the desire to practice faith and commerce unhindered by the leash of the British empire, both catalyzes and sustains the pro-capitalist and pro-democratic America of today. But what about suprenational narratives? Do origin stories exist for continental cultures, for global cultures? Misters Price and Thonemann, classical scholars both, cannot speak to the latter; however, the former, the cultural history of early Europe, is well within their purview. And, here, they speak to it clearly and compellingly.

Beginning with events prior to the TTrojan War of Homeric fame (1100 BCE), The Birth of Classical Europe is a systematic and informative excavation of European culture up to the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. Two civilizations dominate this vital, 2,500-year chunk of European history, the Greeks and the Romans. The former, a civilization of warriors and philosophers, thrived for a millennia, agricultural city states slowly consolidating into regional alliances which bound the Greeks in common cause against foreign threats. This profoundly impacted Greek thought and Greek supremacy which persisted until the rise of the Roman Republic. The latter, a civilization of soldiers and farmers guided by populist autocrats, rose rapidly in the third and second centuries BCE, consuming Greek thought and smashing Greek supremacy to reign unchecked,for the next 600 years, as the most powerful European state the continent had ever known. Ostensibly a republic, a sense of destiny and self-belief elevated Rome above the other Italian city states,consolidating the peninsula on its way to conquering territories in Europe, Africa and Asia, founding an empire nearly as impressive as the one Alexander so briefly forged.

Whereas the Greeks connected themselves, historically,to both the Homeric narrative of the Trojan War, as well as their bronzed-aged forefathers who created an identity by defeating and banishing the tribal, animalistic peoples that preceded them, the Romans connected themselves to history through Aeneas, a Trojan hero who survived the fall of his civilization to father Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Not only did both cultures cherish their origin myths as a means of legitimizing their existences, they rose to power in similar ways as well, by forming alliances to conquer an enemy common to their internal tribes. For the Greeks, these enemies emanated from Troy and Persia, the latter of which had the power to annihilate Greek culture. For the Romans, the enemies were Carthaginian and Mithridatic in origin, civilizations and alliances from Africa and Asia that stood in the way of Roman destiny. Together, these two European civilizations endured and, in doing so, succeeded, by dint of their longevity and power, to imprint their cultures and their gods, their ethics and their dreams, upon a continent of disparate peoples, connecting them, in an unbroken line, back into Greco-Roman antiquity.

Though The Birth of Classical Europe is a dry, academic text which, at times, threatens to overwhelm the reader with a flurry of unfamiliar events and archaeological parlance, it sustains its vitality and relevance by connecting the deeds of ancient cultures to the morals of the modern day. Much as we may wish it otherwise, primogeniture is important to us. We place great stock in the first one to discover, claim, own, invent, something. And so it should come as no surprise that the politics of the Social War, or the radicalism of Athenian Democracy impact on our lives. For these are the West's cultural forefathers. The founders of the United States did not pull their Constitution out of the clouds; they looked to the Roman Republic for lessons in the creation of a free state. It is this continuity which the authors captured here so well.

This is excellent and thorough work. It is unquestionably obsessed with the Greco-Roman legacy, relegating to the sidelines the cultural contributions of early, western Europe. I wish the authors had more than merely touched on the Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures which appear to have stretched from Germany to Hungary. But it is unclear to what extent these cultures influence us today. After all, we are not erecting statues to Hallstattian queens before the parliaments of Europe. Those we reserve for the heroes of Greece and Rome. (4/5 Stars)

Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles

From The Week of August 21, 2011

It is a sad but universal maxim of human nature that we demonize that which we most fear. Be it the rise of the industrial might of Asia, or the influx of immigrant populations into our communities, or even the building of an Islamic community center near Ground 0, we all denigrate peoples and faiths, corporations and governments, because it helps to justify our prejudices. It is infinitely easier to indulge in thoughtless spite than it is to examine the ugly truths that linger behind our fear. For most of us, this ill will is internal, a mental monologue covered up by a veneer of politeness. But for those few among us who possess genuine power, bigotry can ignite wars from which some people never recover. So it is now; so it has ever been. It is a maxim to which the lost people of Carthage would surely testify.

Raised in what is now modern-day Tunis, Carthage was a powerful, north African state which plied the oceanic waters between Africa and Europe for much of the first millennium BCE. Though it is now best remembered for the mercilessness with which it was exterminated by the Roman Republic during the Third Punic War, Carthaginian power predated Roman might by centuries. In fact, for most of its history, Greek Syracuse was its chief rival and antagonist, not the Romans who would eventually annihilate it. A mighty naval power, Carthage was a magnet for wealth, successfully deploying a powerful, oligarchical council which guided it to Mediterranean prominence. But while its achievements enabled its expansion into Spain, Italy and Greece, it was also its downfall. For it stoked up in prideful and powerful Rome jealousy and envy for which the Roman character was ill-equipped to suffer.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed is, in the main, a treatise on the history of Carthage, the mythology of its founding in ninth century BCE, its rise to mercantile supremacy in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, its obliteration at the hands of the ruthless Roman Republic in the first century BCE, and the years between in which its great generals, its geographic advantages, and its entrepreneurial spirit made it an immensely successful civilization. But while Mr. Miles details, here, the history of this Phoenician society, now remembered for Hannibal, its greatest and most prodigal son, and for the Romans sowing salt into its soil, it is the fearfulness with which the Romans viewed Carthage that connects this ancient tale to the present day.

Want drives human action: want of stuff, want of emotion, want of power. And so, when Carthage dared to stand before the assembled might of Rome and demand that the Italian state recognize it as an equal, to treat with it on the terms of a worthy opponent, the want of Rome, to be the best, to have no equal, to be supreme in every way, drove it to commit genocide against Carthage, to refuse to stop until it was no more. For only then, in the destruction of an enemy, could the preeminence of the Roman Republic be truly declared.

This is an excellent and scholarly work. Mr. Miles is as detailed in his reconstruction of Carthaginian civilization as he is in sketching out the sociopolitical forces which tied the region together during its reign. But as much as this work teaches the reader about Carthage, it is surprisingly vague on the Roman side of the equation. Yes, there are brief descriptions of some important figures, Marcus Cato, whose famous quote gave this book its title, Fabius the Delayer who was so successful in fighting Hannibal, and Scipio Africanus, the man who eventually destroyed Carthage, but these figures seem like afterthoughts. Perhaps the author considers the Roman side of this story to have already been decisively told. Nonetheless, I required more.

There are lessons here, not only for humans individually but for powerful nations as well. You may, for awhile, assuage your fears by vanquishing those you consider your enemies, but ultimately those fears will end you. For the enemy is ultimately in your own character, not in those who are not like you. And if you must fight the enemy to prove your own worth, then you will only wind up annihilating yourself. (4/5 Stars)

Good Book by David Plotz

From The Week of March 13, 2011

On several occasions, I've considered reading the Bible. A book, so old, so widely read and adhered to, surely has some meaning for even a non-believer. And yet, every time I consider this thousand-plus-page tome of ancient fables, I lose the will to slog through it. Imagine my delight, then, when Mr. Plotz, the editor of Slate Magazine, published Good Book, an account of his sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing, adventures through the Hebrew Bible. Though Mr. Plotz's summary is far too brief to grant a full picture of the Book, it jauntily walks the reader through its major events and themes while gently challenging several of its maxims which have, over time, mutated from their original meanings. As a consequence, he has produced a light-hearted primer on a book that untold millions have read, dissected, and lived by for the last 2,000 years.

From God turning on the lights, to the rape of Dinah, to Abraham and Joseph and Moses and Joshua, the kings and the victims, the prophets and the pillagers, Mr. Plotz subjects the Book to the scrutiny of a 21st century mind. And though it's clear that he finds meaning and comfort in his project, to examine the Book in all its glories, in all its blood, in all its history, he's equally troubled and repelled by fables which do not translate well into a modern, enlightened society. Nonetheless, he forges ahead, trudging to the finish line of a book about as inconsistent as it is ancient.

Though all of humanity's problems emanate from humanity's failings, and not the failings of the Bible, it's also true that the Book has been a source of great comfort and great ugliness. It relies upon its readers to interpret its stories. But who defines what's proper? Who has the wisdom to divine and translate its original meanings? This is a book that has been frozen in time for two millennia, having only been subjected to occasional re-organization, re-interpretation, and re-distribution. There are no true authorities. And so those who need to believe in something, those who need to find legitimacy for their desires, read the Bible, pull from it the pieces of wisdom they require, and blend the resulting concoction of self-justifications into a mixture that suits their purposes and, ta da, righteousness. But if this is the Book's danger, it's light flows from its encapsulation of history. Its allegories have helped many people do good works over countless generations.

Mr. Plotz's has done a wonderful job of illustrating both the good and the bad, never dwelling too long on neither as he journeys through a time none of us will ever fully understand. His wit is sharp, his sarcasm enjoyable and his heartfelt desire to understand the machine code of his belief system is moving and thoughtful. A quiet and well-rounded piece. (3/ Stars)

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

From The Week of December 19, 2010

Cleopatra VII, now known simply as Cleopatra, lived a life so monumental, stood at or near the center of so many Earth-changing events, that her name, her deeds and her legend have survived 2,000 years of turbulent history. Why is she so famous? What was her life like? Was she as alluring as she's been portrayed? Ms. Schiff's wonderful and readable biography of a most exceptional person answers these questions and, in doing so, pulls back the curtain on a life to which we can only barely relate.

Born in 69 BCE, Cleopatra was destined to have a challenging life. Since Ptolemy I, the Alexandrian general who hurried to claim the kingdom after the death of Alexander the Great and the balkanization of his empire, Egypt had been uneasily ruled by his descendants. The kingdom was, in Cleopatra's time, suffering from a fusion of Greek thought and Egyptian custom which Ptolemy had stirred together before layering it with an invented religion designed to turn skeptical Egyptians into faithful defenders of his dynasty. As such, Cleopatra grew up Greek in a kingdom of Egyptians, deified by them but also kept apart from them for most of her life. What childhood she may have had was overshadowed by the practicalities of Egypt's royals. Co-ruler with her father, then married to her brother who shared the throne with her according to Egyptian custom. But relations between the siblings were never solid. In fact, by the time the Roman civil War spilled over into Egypt, a teenaged Cleopatra was in exile, having been successfully booted from power by her brother's powerful advisors. At her lowest ebb politically, a death price on her head and unable to raise a substantive enough rebellion to resurrect her political fortunes, her life must have seemed at an end. But Cleopatra would go onto live 20 more years, courting and bearing children for two of Rome's most powerful rulers, all this without sacrificing to them her crown or her freedom, commanding the loyalty of her own country with an iron hand and living unchallenged internally until her now famous suicide after the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE.

The means by which Cleopatra managed this remarkable feat occupy the bulk of Ms. Schiff's chronicle. From the disastrous execution of Pompey the Great, to the hasty removal of her brother, to the alliance with Julius Caesar, and then the love with Antony, Ms. Schiff has provided not only a coherent record of startling events, but context for the many twists and turns in a dizzying period which not only saw Egypt's power on the wane, but also witnessed the fall of the Roman republic and the establishment of its empire, with Egypt a jewel in its imperial crown. From the strange customs to the ruinous decisions, Ms. Schiff has encircled a life drenched in mythology and attacked it until the truth spilled free. This biography had me at its first, outstanding page. (4/5 Stars)

The Ghosts Of Cannae by Robert L. O'Connell

From The Week of December 12, 2010

Hannibal, Mithridates and Spartacus... Of these three great, external, existential threats to the Roman Republic in its last century of existence, prior to being converted into an empire by Augustus, Hannibal came the closest to conquering the unconquerable Italians. After marching his expeditionary force out of Spain and into Italy via the Alps, he vanquished Roman army after Roman army until he stood at the very gates of Rome, his sworn enemy. How was a son of Carthage able to impose himself and his largely international army into achieving such an unthinkable feat against the world's mightiest power? Cannae, the site of a battle that transformed warfare, changed an empire and sowed Hannibal's downfall.

Though estimates vary, it is generally assumed that Hannibal, after his victories over the Romans had a fighting strength of some 40,000 Spanish, Galls and Carthaginians. Opposing him?Almost 90,000 Romans who, in spite of Hannibal's prior victories, were commanded by generals far too confident in their own abilities. Trusting that the massed might of the Roman republic would smash the Carthaginians to dust, they pursued a seemingly skittish Hannibal to Cannae where they were finally able to engage with his forces, eager to dispatch him. But Hannibal was ready. Retreating the center of his force before the Roman charge, he lured the bulk of the enemy force into the midst of his army, putting terrible strain on the men along his interior line who had to hold long enough for his flanks to pincer in from the sides, collapsing down on the Roman from three sides. Though this maneuver had been speculated upon previously, history records Cannae as the first successful deployment of the Double Envelopment, a tactic that annihilated the Roman army at Cannae, scattering only a few thousand survivors to the wind.

Mr. O'Connell describes the battle in vivid detail, attempting to reconstruct key points like its precise location, the weather conditions, and the mindset of the belligerents, but his tale is strongest when elucidating the consequences of the battle. We admire roman culture, but we don't understand it. This was a people who believed so strongly in their own superiority that, when the few thousand Roman soldiers fled the field, they were condemned by the republic, stripped of all comfort and glory, and banished from Rome. But while the defeat seemed to have put the republic on the ropes, Mr. O'Connell explains how this was, in a real sense, an illusion. Hannibal's army was never built to besiege Rome. He could terrorize the countryside all he liked, but if he couldn't take the capital, he could never complete his victory. Hannibal assumed that Rome would surrender, but when they refused, Hannibal was actually forced, thanks to a series of tactical retreats, to leave Italy where, upon his return to Carthage, he oversaw the downfall of his homeland as Cannae became a rallying cry for a merciless Rome which punished Carthage and sent Hannibal into permanent exile. Cannae was one of the greatest tactical victories ever recorded, but it was also the moment at which Hannibal lost the larger war. Such a dichotomy makes Cannae one of the most unusual and fascinating moments in history and Mr. O'Connell does it justice with an account both vivid and expansive. (3/5 Stars)

The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor

From The Week of November 14, 2010

With respect to Spartacus and Hannibal, no one man haunted the Roman republic more than Mithridates the Great. For while the rebel slave and the son of Carthage both managed to rebel, briefly, against Roman rule, Mithridates practically lived the whole of his life in defiance of the great republic, holding his own against many of its armies, captained by some of its most legendary generals. His voice comes down to us through history, impelling us to rebel against tyranny, to not settle for less than our freedom, a remarkable feat given that the rebel king, by all rights, should not have lived beyond boyhood.

In the time of the Roman republic, royal courts were fractious and dangerous places where treachery against ones own blood was refined to an art. Mithridates' mother was a gleeful practitioner of the poisonous arts, a fact which seems to have instilled in her son two lifelong passions: suspicion of all womenkind and the quest to find the perfect curative. The former poisoned Mithridates' relationships while the latter poisoned his body. But as Ms. Mayor's account of the great king explains so clearly, it was his systematic approach to the pursuit of the perfect potion which allowed him to build up a legendary resistance to all toxins, a fact which did as much as his rebellion to transform him into a legend of history. Sweeping aside his mother and compelling his sister into marriage, Mithridates set about his lifelong quest of defying Rome by learning as much as he could from his land and his people. A descendent of Alexander the Great's generals and an admirer of the great conquerer, he took up many of Alexander's practices, living his life as much in the saddle as he did in his palaces. In doing so, it seems sometimes as if his life is one, continuous adventure, with fortunes now rising and now waning in the war against Italy.

Ms. Mayor, a scholar at Stanford University, captures the whole of Mithridates' vast life, devoting as much time to his experimentation with various poisons and curatives as she does to the uprising against Rome for which he is known. Though she indulges in a great deal of speculation, thanks to the incomplete nature of the historical record, her conjectures seem sensible and logical, illuminating the life of a man for whom we have no contemporary equivalent. For his desire to be free seems to have been married to a kind of ruthless cruelty the modern world finds appalling. Animating such a giant figure, making some sense of the myths and the legends, a challenge Ms. Mayor more than manages.

Who isn't up for a good rebellion? After all, our love affair with the underdog must emanate from somewhere. Mithridates is the ultimate story of devoting oneself to the unwinnable war because it's right to fight for ones principles. Unless one has an active dislike for history, the journey will not fail to entertain or edify. (3/5 Stars)

Life In Year One by Scott Korb

From The Week of November 07, 2010

It is surprisingly difficult to find a history of the time of Jesus Christ which has not been infected by Christian dogma. Regardless of whether or not we believe Christ was divine, we know that he existed, in some form, and that he and his faith changed the world forever. As such, it's important, even to this non-believer, to understand the place and the time that shaped him. Mr. Korb has done a wonderful job of illuminating the Palestine that Christ knew, reconstructing the customs he would have practiced, the towns he would have known, and even a few of the time's great figures he may have met. In doing so, Mr. Korb edifies us on the ways in which Christ's world was not our world, how so much of what he knew was drenched in the misconceptions that dominate a world without science and scientific inquiry.

Rather than diminish the man, Life In Year One fleshes him out by animating the challenges Christ faced in the form of the corrupt sociopolitical forces at work in 1st century Palestine. Riding shotgun are explanations for the origins of numerous biblical dictates, some of which amuse but many of which enlighten us on the necessary context for what now seem like non-sensical biblical notions. This is a quick and playful read, composed by an author with a sense of humor, an author who attacked his subject with a proper balance of humor and curiosity. Definitely one of the five books you must take with you when you decide to embark upon that time-traveling trip back to the dawn of Christianity. (3/5 Stars)

The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss

From The Week of October 17, 2010

Every generation produces human demigods, larger-than-life figures who tower over their eras. Sometimes, this is nothing more than a consequence of the vicissitudes of time; the accounts of one hero are preserved while accounts of another are ashed in the inferno of a monastery fire now lost to us. But sometimes, the plight of these historical giants resonate with us from across millennia, their stories made allegories which speak to universal, human truths. Spartacus is one such figure.

Dr. Strauss, a professor of history at Cornell University, has pulled from the mists of time all the available facts about Spartacus' difficult life and assembled them into a mostly coherent picture. He was probably born in Thrace (now Bulgaria) and he was almost definitely a Roman soldier prior to deserting his post. Thereafter, he was captured -- Romans frowned upon deserters as much as we do today -- and enslaved, interned in a school for gladiators. There, Spartacus would have coupled his talent for war with celebrity and charisma, for it's clear that he was popular with his Roman audiences. A famous, charismatic warrior... familiar with Roman tactics... If that's not a recipe for revolt...

The rest is history. Spartacus broke free of his gladiator school, rallied an army that numbered in the tens of thousands, defeated nine different Roman armies that opposed him, and humiliated the greatest empire of its day by running roughshod over the Italian countryside for two years before a series of reversals, culminating in a betrayal by pirates, lead to his downfall. Dr. Strauss tells the tale enviable clarity and admirable self-restraint. There's much here that can only be guessed at, or teased out by inference. Dr. Strauss is careful not to assume too much about what we cannot know for certain.

Perhaps the Romans never learned the lesson Spartacus has taught the subsequent generations who have heard his name and learned his story, that no one wishes to be, or deserves to be, a slave; that the natural disposition of every human soul is to live, free to pursue his or her self-interest; that the inevitable outcome of enslaving someone for the captor's gain is rebellion. Given that the last 2,000 years of history has been, in some form or another, a struggle towards universal freedom, it's no wonder that Spartacus' heroic fight has a hold over us. It is an example of what results from tyranny. (3/5 Stars)

The Rise And Fall Of Alexandria by Justin Pollard

From The Week of February 28, 2010

How do we know what we know about the past? Since the advent of modern technology, the sum total of human knowledge has been spread over a dizzying array of computer systems, databases, and library archives, all of which are difficult to destroy. And so we can feel fairly confident that our descendants will have a pretty clear picture of who we are and what we did. There's too much data for uncertainty. But stretch back before European Enlightenment and we have a much different picture of history. Literacy is confined to a tiny, privileged minority which means that, in the absence of a strong, oral history to pass on the knowledge of the common folk, what we do know of the past is determined by those rich enough, or religious enough, to have had the time and or the passion to write down and preserve, for posterity, the events of their times. Take a moment and grasp this notion. How much of what we know is skewed by bias, by false testimony, by deliberate deception? Not only that, what giants of history have come and gone, their accounts lost to us through misfortune? Because a book didn't get translated, or a church decided the story was inappropriate, or a fire burned off the material with which we could have constructed a history. Everything we know is filtered through a few thousand accounts of events we can barely relate to, but it didn't have to be this way.

Alexandria, the center of human knowledge. Named after the great conquerer, it was popularized by Ptolemy, an Alexandrian general with aspirations of greatness, to follow in his master's footsteps. And though he was somewhat successful in his goal, creating a line of kings and queens that lasted for centuries, his greater gift, at least to those who came after him, was his capital city, to which scholars, philosophers, mathematicians and dreamers all flocked. We know from modern day examples that places of knowledge have a kind of magnetism, that they draw in talent from far and wide. Look no further than the some 80 colleges ringed about Boston, Massachusetts for proof of that. Alexandria was no exception. At the height of the city's power, its library alone may have held tens of thousands of books procured from ships that would come into Alexandria's port, or bought at book fairs from all over the learned world. It is perhaps the gravest human travesty that the library burned, no doubt taking with it heroes now forever lost to us.

Knowledge may well be the most powerful human force, making the shaping of knowledge a close second. This is a theme that runs clear through Mr. Pollard's biography of Alexandria: the city, its rulers, its thinkers, and its great library. It chronicles the city's rise to prominence, which seems almost a beacon of knowledge in the night of ignorance, and its fall, an event which might well have plunged the western world into centuries of intellectual stagnation. This book is as thought provoking as it is edifying, asking us to wonder how our world might have been different had the light of knowledge been allowed to burn for awhile longer. Well told and with some fascinating, historical figures I'd never heard of. (4/5 Stars)

Alexander The Great And His Time by Agnis Sevill

From The Week of February 21, 2010

He is the most celebrated conquerer and hero in human history, the great unifier of seemingly half the world, Alexander, who spent his adult life in a saddle, leading an army of conquest and consolidation. Ms. Sevill's account of the great hero's life is forced into guesswork far more often than we'd like, but then there's much about the enigmatic Alexander that we do not know. And so gaps are filled in, suppositions made, avenues of thought explored, knowing all the while that only some of his deeds have come down to us through the turbulence of history.

Though Ms. Sevill does spent most of her time on Alexander's life, his birth to a fractious court, his difficult relationship with his mother, his thirst for knowledge, his heroic tutors, his stunning tactics, she leaves off her account with a rumination on the man's legacy. For while few will argue the claim at the top of this review, can the title of greatest conquerer and hero truly be claimed by one who died so young and whose reputation far outstripped his actual legacy? His empire fell apart almost immediately upon his death. And though his name thunders through history, does that not have to be weighed against his lack of planning for his own death, the event of which caused widespread chaos and strife? In this, he strikes me as not unlike Genghis Khan, a great man of his time who believed that he could forge a lasting legacy through strength of will alone, not thinking that, without his spirit to maintain the order he created with the edge of his sword, all would fall quickly into disarray.

What is greatness? Is it military genius? Or is it having the clarity of mind to imagine the next step, the next chapter, and plan for it? If it is the former, then Alexander is the unchallenged head of the pantheon of heroes. But if it is the latter, then I'm far from certain he rates above a particularly wise farmer.

In any event, a well-told history, insofar as we know it to be. (3/5 Stars)