ROMAN REALITIES

by Finley Hooper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 1978

Finley Hooper's history of Rome covers the usual ground from Rome's origins to the death of the Western Empire. But it sparkles with lucidity, grace, insight, and confident learning. Not merely a scholarly narrative, Roman Realities plays off modern scholarship against what the Romans (e.g., Livy, Polybius, Cicero, Plutarch) said of themselves and their past, thereby drawing the reader directly into the historical issues and drama and into disparate Roman minds. With an awareness of what evidence is reliable, Hooper interweaves Roman reportage and philosophy, anecdotes and analyses to provide a rich version of human character, social life, politics, and culture in Rome through periods of vitality and decay, renewal and ultimate decline. We see Hannibal, unsurpassed military tactician, defeated finally by Roman resilience; Julius Caesar, brilliant, charming, confident, strong, and popular, undone by lack of tact and self-discipline; Cicero, an orator of genius, a moralist of traditional virtues, victimized by his vanity; Augustus, austere, decisive, capable of cruelty and good sense, who set a precedent impossible to follow. Hooper's manner is well-suited to his interpretation of Rome's fall. From the late years of the Republic onward, respect for constitutional political life lessened: some citizens took the law into their own hands, and finally the power of the military and the emperor and the influence of the rich subverted the strong political spirit which had sustained Rome for centuries. At the same time, the Empire also lost the allegiance of the intellectuals, who had nourished the Roman spirit through meditations on law, history, and philosophy: thinkers now became theologians and turned toward the other world. Hooper's survey (a successor to Greek Realities, 1967) breathes life into a subject easily made dull, and thus serves as a fine introduction and synthesis.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1978

ISBN: 0814315941

Page Count: -

Publisher: Wayne State Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1978

Categories: NONFICTION