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A review by agrippinaes
A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon
3.0
This was a very thought-provoking book. I thoroughly enjoyed Emma Southon’s Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore when I read it a few years ago, and I do enjoy her style of writing. It’s funny and witty and livens up the subject matter. Her sense of humour is great and it really lifts the content, which at times can be heavy or dull. When I read the opening chapter, I thought this book would be a relatively light-hearted look at murder in Ancient Rome; I didn’t expect that it would make me completely rethink my feelings about this time period.
The book is split into chapters, each focusing on a different type of murder in Ancient Rome, and looking at it from all angles using various historic sources, contemporary and otherwise. Some of these chapters worked better than others - any focusing on the imperial family, for example, scanned a lot better to me, whilst ones focusing on other areas could feel a bit rambling at times. That was my main issue with the book as a whole. Some parts felt like they went off on a bit of a tangent, some chapters felt like they could have been combined, and sometimes it felt a bit disjointed.
But I did think there were some parts of truly beautiful writing, and that’s where rethinking my feelings about Ancient Rome in general come into it. There are, as you might expect, some difficult topics under discussion in this book, and Southon’s disgust with a lot of Roman practices is palpable, particularly when it comes to their treatment of enslaved people, women, and children. There’s a recognition throughout that these people she’s talking about are real people, and how that understanding can be lost over time - the passage about the deaths of babies, for example, brought a tear to my eye.
This really brought home to me the reality of how brutal the Romans were as a people, and how horrible their society must have been to live in. The graphic nature of some of the writing - fully describing, for example, how crucifixion worked in practice - wasn’t for me, but I did understand the purpose of it, in the sense of trying to make the reader understand her point.
The thing with this book is that you do have to fully understand how the Romans viewed the concept of life, and its inherent value, completely differently to us. It’s hard to wrap your head around. I think Southon does a decent job at getting that across and, as I said, she really made me rethink my attitude and feelings about this time period.
My lower rating is because I felt like some parts of the book were a bit long - as I said, I think some chapters could have been combined and trimmed down - and sometimes the writing - although generally very respectful - did slip into being gratuitous at points. Overall, though, this is a very interesting overview of murder in Ancient Rome, and raises some really interesting points. And I love Southon’s injection of humour. I genuinely wish more history books were written like this; there’s an accessibility to the style that makes it very engaging.
Content Notes:
Warnings:
The book is split into chapters, each focusing on a different type of murder in Ancient Rome, and looking at it from all angles using various historic sources, contemporary and otherwise. Some of these chapters worked better than others - any focusing on the imperial family, for example, scanned a lot better to me, whilst ones focusing on other areas could feel a bit rambling at times. That was my main issue with the book as a whole. Some parts felt like they went off on a bit of a tangent, some chapters felt like they could have been combined, and sometimes it felt a bit disjointed.
But I did think there were some parts of truly beautiful writing, and that’s where rethinking my feelings about Ancient Rome in general come into it. There are, as you might expect, some difficult topics under discussion in this book, and Southon’s disgust with a lot of Roman practices is palpable, particularly when it comes to their treatment of enslaved people, women, and children. There’s a recognition throughout that these people she’s talking about are real people, and how that understanding can be lost over time - the passage about the deaths of babies, for example, brought a tear to my eye.
This really brought home to me the reality of how brutal the Romans were as a people, and how horrible their society must have been to live in. The graphic nature of some of the writing - fully describing, for example, how crucifixion worked in practice - wasn’t for me, but I did understand the purpose of it, in the sense of trying to make the reader understand her point.
The thing with this book is that you do have to fully understand how the Romans viewed the concept of life, and its inherent value, completely differently to us. It’s hard to wrap your head around. I think Southon does a decent job at getting that across and, as I said, she really made me rethink my attitude and feelings about this time period.
My lower rating is because I felt like some parts of the book were a bit long - as I said, I think some chapters could have been combined and trimmed down - and sometimes the writing - although generally very respectful - did slip into being gratuitous at points. Overall, though, this is a very interesting overview of murder in Ancient Rome, and raises some really interesting points. And I love Southon’s injection of humour. I genuinely wish more history books were written like this; there’s an accessibility to the style that makes it very engaging.
Content Notes:
Warnings: