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A review by menniemenace
A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon
4.0
3.5/5
#Chapters have titles
#Title is over 22 letters long
This was an odd history book. The author kept apologizing for the boring topic and explaining why she will not elaborate on this extremely dull character's life, which weirded me out a little bit.
However, the book soon becomes very interesting. It covers new -for me- incidents and offers many narratives for a single event, which is always good to have in a history book.
My problem with it is that sometimes the comparisons to the modern world were very eurocentric, which might as well have been a different world for me - a non eurocentric reader.
She's not obligated to give a wide worldview, but considering she was talking about how murder means different things in different places, she could have chosen some different places.
Also, she mentions Lybia, Syria, and Judea (modern-day Palestine) saying "it was all Roman". Was it, though? Again, as someone who studied this in school through a different lens, other countries that had their own civilisations were not "oh, sure we have our own traditions and unique systems, but we're basically Rome, just on the other side of Rome". The book is a little too eurocentric for my taste.
It's normal for a European book to be eurocentric, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
Anyway, the book was good and offered a different perspective on some very old stories. I liked it.
#Chapters have titles
#Title is over 22 letters long
This was an odd history book. The author kept apologizing for the boring topic and explaining why she will not elaborate on this extremely dull character's life, which weirded me out a little bit.
However, the book soon becomes very interesting. It covers new -for me- incidents and offers many narratives for a single event, which is always good to have in a history book.
My problem with it is that sometimes the comparisons to the modern world were very eurocentric, which might as well have been a different world for me - a non eurocentric reader.
She's not obligated to give a wide worldview, but considering she was talking about how murder means different things in different places, she could have chosen some different places.
Also, she mentions Lybia, Syria, and Judea (modern-day Palestine) saying "it was all Roman". Was it, though? Again, as someone who studied this in school through a different lens, other countries that had their own civilisations were not "oh, sure we have our own traditions and unique systems, but we're basically Rome, just on the other side of Rome". The book is a little too eurocentric for my taste.
It's normal for a European book to be eurocentric, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
Anyway, the book was good and offered a different perspective on some very old stories. I liked it.