skygiants | (no subject)

Recently I keep having conversations with people that go like this:

me: allow me to show off to you how much I know about the Roman Empire
interlocutor: yes good job you've named four emperors, congratulations
me: it's because I just recently read this book on murder in ancient Rome! the book was very interesting and asked thoughtful questions and contained a lot of useful information thoughtfully presented --
interlocutor: sounds great!
me: BUT, also, unfortunately, it's written entirely in BUCKLE UP TWITTER style --
interlocutor: ah.
me: but the information IS really good, I just wish the book would stop apologizing to me for giving it to me! I'M READING THIS BOOK BECAUSE I WANT INFORMATION! PLEASE STOP ASSUMING THAT I'M BORED BY THE INFORMATION I PICKED UP THE BOOK FOR!!!
interlocutor: I see this book left an impression.
me: yes. sorry. would you like another factoid about the Roman Empire.

The book is called A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (as many of you already know as I have seen many of you already post about this book in more or less exactly these terms, and of course you were all right.) It's a detailed, thorough examination that begins by asking the question of what kinds of killings actually count as murder, and whether you can call something a murder if it's only considered as damage to an individual rather than a crime against the state for which retribution is enacted by a state, which in many cases ancient Rome didn't -- which is an angle I would never have thought to consider and provides a really good lens for through which to examine Roman society as a whole. The author works her way down from the big famous Imperial murders through patricides, matricides and street crime down to the perfectly-socially-acceptable-in-Rome deaths of gladiators and slaves with specific examples and useful analysis and I really enjoyed reading it, except when I hit a phrase like this and wanted to throw the book across the room:

Before we get there we need to see how murder became so central to Roman politics, and I'm sorry but it involves a lot of politics and chat about land reform policies, and it's awful. We can get through this together; I believe in us.

STOP! STOP THAT!! JUST TELL ME ABOUT THE LAND REFORM! I PROMISE YOU I TRULY WANT TO KNOW!

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I'm trying to think of how to describe 'buckle up Twitter' style and it's like -- short, punchy, expletive-laden, full of oversimplifications because you are writing an essay of sorts in which every 240-character segment needs to feel both complete in and of itself AND like an advertisement to read & retweet the rest of the thread. Some of the threads can be fun but often they do feel fairly condescending to me, especially in a book where the author does have the space to explicate context and should not have to feel a need to be entertaining every single paragraph.

Right! And it might be helpful or at least interesting to come back and read about the land reform context later!

oooh, thank you for the recommendation! (But "no one hooks up with anyone's dad at any point" does feel like such a sweeping statement to make about social conflicts in the Roman Republic ....)

Would you like some recommendations? I presume yes but am checking in case.

Huh, interesting! Yeah, I can imagine that trying to cram an essay into such a short-form medium where you are also competing for attention will have some strange effects.

You are so right!

Ooooh, what's the podcast?

The History of Byzantium!

It’s a sort of sequel to The History of Rome podcast, both in time and in inspiration. It’s very good (they both are) and I’ve been learning heaps! There’s also a lot of it, I’m up to episode 130 and the podcast is in the 900s (the podcast itself is up to episode 230 and is in the 1100s, but it’s not strictly chronological, there’s episodes looking in detail at particular people or aspects of society). I’d definitely recommend it!

NICE! It sounds like even if I don't have time to listen to every episode, I could still find some that are on particular topics I'm interested in. Thank you!

Yeah, definitely. The podcaster has a style where he does these 'end of the century' episodes which tend to look at things like 'how did Roman identity change over this century?' or sometimes more directly 'so how did the army change?' or 'so what was with all those times the Byzantines got rid of their Emperors but then returned to essentially the same system of government?' and those are often the most interesting to me, and I feel like might fit the bill for your interests too!

Almost a month after the fact: A book has actually just come in at the library for me(virtual library, I have no way of actually getting to a library at the moment so it's all ebook loans which are amazing) tracking the lead-up to the end of the Roman Republic and it truly, truly is all about land reform.

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