A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Murder in Ancient Rome
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
‘Those left cold by the sober tones of scholarship will find this voice liberating and intoxicating. Its energy is boundless and its range immense.’ Wall Street Journal
In Ancient Rome all the best stories have one thing in common – murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic, Caligula was butchered in the theatre, Claudius was poisoned at dinner.
But what did killing really mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? Emma Southon examines real-life homicides from Roman history to take us inside Ancient Rome’s unique culture of crime and punishment, and show us how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Southon (Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World) returns with a spirited look at ancient Roman history through a true crime lens. "Few other societies have revelled in and revered the deliberate and purposeful killing of men and women as much as the Romans," Southon writes. The beating death of populist politician Tiberius Gracchus over his proposed land reforms in 133 BCE set off a century's worth of political murders that culminated in the assassination of Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic, according to Southon. Other case histories include Emperor Tiberius's investigation into the death of a military commander's daughter in 24 CE (her husband claimed she'd thrown herself out of their bedroom window, but Tiberius discovered signs of a struggle) and Locusta, who mixed the poisons that Emperor Nero used to kill his stepbrother and possibly his aunt (he had to kill his mother by sword because she took multiple antidotes every day). Along the way, Southon works in intriguing history lessons about Roman law, politics, marriage, and sport, and makes breezy yet enlightening analogies (obscene epigrams ridiculing elite Romans were like a "much ruder Daily Show"). This colorful chronicle of ancient Rome has an appealingly modern sensibility.
