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The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
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4.7 • 31 Ratings
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'The bloodstained drama of the last decades of the Roman republic... is told afresh with tremendous wit, narrative verve and insight'
'I owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Holland not just for reminding me of the great figures who bestrode the Roman world - Pompey and Crassus, Cato, Cicero and Caesar - but for explaining what it was that made Rome the greatest superpower the world has known, why it lasted so long and what caused its eventual fall' Daily Mail
'Gripping and hugely entertaining. It is a story crammed with drama and spectacle... but the real attraction of Holland's book is the wit and contemporary sensibility that he brings to his often bloody tale' Books of the Year, Sunday Times
'This is narrative history at its best... it really held me, in fact, obsessed me' Ian McEwan, Books of the Year, Guardian
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After a palace coup demolished the reign of King Tarquin of Rome in 509 B.C., a republican government flourished, providing every person an opportunity to participate in political life in the name of liberty. As Holland, a novelist and adapter of Herodotus' Histories for British radio, points out in this lively re-creation of the republic's rise and fall, the seeds of destruction were planted in the very soil in which the early republic flourished. It was more often members of the patrician classes who had the resources to achieve political success. Such implicit class distinctions in an ostensibly classless society also gave rise to a new group of rulers who acted like monarchs. Holland chronicles the rise to power of such leaders as Sulla Felix, Pompey, Cicero and Julius Caesar. Some of these leaders, such as Pompey, appealed to the masses by expanding the republic through military conquest; others, like Cicero, worked to reinforce class distinctions. Holland points to the suppression of the Gracchian revolution a series of reforms in favor of the poor pushed by the Gracchus brothers in the second century B.C. as the beginning of the end of the republic, providing the context into which Julius Caesar would step with his own attempts to save the republic. As Holland points out, Caesar actually precipitated civil wars and helped to reestablish an imperial form of government in Rome. With the skill of a good novelist, Holland weaves a rip-roaring tale of political and historical intrigue as he chronicles the lively personalities and problems that led to the end of the Roman republic. Maps.
Customer Reviews
Rubicon
Tom Holland has brought to life a subject which would usually be hard going for the reader, in this case he has succeeded in producing a work that entertains and holds the readers attention from start to finish with clear threads and connections to events seen from the eyes of someone who was there in spirit.