Saturday 11 October 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests


The Roman Triumph

The conquering hero as show-off

Mary Beard
Belknap Harvard, 448pp, £14.40,
Frederic Raphael
Wednesday, 14th November 2007

Frederic Raphael

How should ancient Roman history be written? Gibbon larded his account with ironic elegance. Echoing Tacitus’ epigrammatic sarcasm, he made ponderously light of the vanities and savagery of imperial rule. Yet the Latinate charm of his prose implied wry nostalgia, not only for the age of the Antonines, but also for the whole myth of Roman grandeur. In my undergraduate day, Professor F. E. Adcock continued to lisp in Tacitean epigrams, but the great modern iconoclast was Ronald Syme. A New Zealander whose The Roman Revolution cut the classy crap, Syme denounced Augustus and his family as proto-mafiosi who had taken over Rome in what François Mitterrand later called (when speaking of de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic) ‘le coup d’état permanent’.

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Terry Collmann

November 22nd, 2007 6:08pm

Saucer of milk for Mr Raphael ...

Kate

December 22nd, 2007 2:02pm

At least Mary Beard is legible and vaguely coherent.

Chris Franklin

January 11th, 2008 12:57pm

pompous, or what?

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