Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What Did the Romans Ever Do for Us?, 22 Jul 2006
In "Barbarians," Terry Jones and Alan Ereira finally answer the question posed in "Monty Python's Life of Brian": "What did the Romans ever do for us?" "The answer," according to the authors, "is not usually very nice."
Jones and Ereira explain that while there are many books setting out the history of Rome from the Roman perspective, there is no general history in English that tells the tale from the viewpoint of the so-called "barbarians." This book is their attempt to remedy this omission, and it recounts the history of Rome as experienced by the Atlantic Celts, the Germans (including the Dacians), the Hellenes (Greeks and Persians), the Huns and others who encountered the pointy end of Roman civilization. The message is that the Romans were not so much bringers of civilization as destroyers of advanced societies, not innovators but relentless conservatives who deliberately suppressed the hard-earned knowledge of the peoples they conquered. In Tacitus' famous phrase, the Romans had a habit of making a wasteland and calling it peace--at least until they encountered the equally ruthless Parthian and Sassanian empires.
"Barbarians" is "popular history" (it accompanies a BBC TV series), and the effort to tell the story from a non-Roman point of view sometimes lapses into exaggeration--for instance, I'm skeptical that the Greeks were really on the verge of an "industrial revolution" before being rolled by the Romans. Still, Jones (of Monty Python fame) and Ereira are witty racontuers--their latest book is a highly readble and surprisingly illuminating account of the ancient world that will raise the hackles of Romanophiles everywhere.
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining - but be careful!, 3 Sep 2006
As you might expect from a Terry Jones book it is highly entertaining as well as informative and the book is chock-full with attested quotes and facts. However you need to be a bit careful with some of the conclusions. True enough the Greeks had the steam engine theory down pat and were inventing vending machines but this was often after the supposedly oppressive Romans conquered them. Jones emphasizes the engineering achievements of the "barbarian" nations at the exclusion of Roman achievements - yet the Roman achievements were often far greater; it took 1,500 years for anyone to put up a dome that was bigger than that at the Pantheon in Rome. The art of making concrete was lost after the Roman period. And the phenomenal engineering achievement in taking aqueducts over dozens of miles to provide Rome (and other cities) with a consistent source of fresh water, something which evades many cities in the world today (and which certainly was not done by the Huns, Goths, Germans, Celts or any of the other "barbarian" races that Jones thinks superior to the Romans), is totally ignored.
Had the book's central thesis been that the Romans were a bit rubbish after the 2nd century AD, when religious dogma pretty much stymied original thought and continuity of rule was shattered by emperor after emperor after emperor, then he would have had a point; but the Romans' only real sin in the context of this book was being a couple of hundred years behind the Greeks, which is no shame as they pretty much invented democracy, comedy, mathematics, atomic theory, literary criticism and so on in about a hundred year period. The West did not catch up till around 1600.
There is a nice irony where Jones praises the Germans for fooling the Romans by making up fake lawsuits to lull the hapless Varus into a false sense of security and then destroying 3 legions at the Teutoberger forest. Yet throughout it is Jones that castigates the Romans for oppressing subjects without mercy; OK, the Romans did their fair share, but Jones gives them no credit for their attempts to have the Germans sort out their disputes in the comparative civilization of a lawcourt. (Jones lambasts the Roman legal system as being a product of a later era, but that ignores the evidence of the Twelve Tables, which are dated to around 5th century BC and include such fairly sophisticated matters such as witness transport, stays of payment, perjury and settlement. The fact that sources for Roman law over the next few hundred years are not great does not mean that there was no such thing. And of course the system was sophisticated enough to produce a great lawyer like Cicero; did any other civilization have as heroes people who did not fight?)
No, there is a reason why the barbarian races did not leave so much of a mark as the Romans. And that is that the Romans - at least either side of 1AD - were a great deal better than them.
But this is an excellent overview of what those other societies might have been like and puts the Roman world in its own context. Make your own conclusions and you cannot go far wrong.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Its all a matter of perspective. , 19 Feb 2007
The Romans were the all conquering, civilising super-heroes of ancient history. Or at least that is pretty much what we have all been brought up to believe. This book is an enjoyable and very readable counterpoint to that hypothesis.
Perhaps the key point to this book is not whether it is completely correct in all its assertions, but that this gives an alternative option to how the world was in those distant days. I have never considered the point of view of a Celt having his life turned upside down by some very violent chaps in togas. I did not realise that the Dacians were very happy in their peaceful world with its manufactured religion that gave them the basis for political stability and a hugely wealthy economy.
The explanation of the demise of the Roman Emoire into two parts, sometimes three or four, was useful and revealing. It actually makes you realise that the Romans were the same as all the other empires that came and went in those tumultuous ancient times, except that the Roman story survives.
The emergence of Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism (the Arians never stood a chance!) is, in my opinion, probably the real reason that the history of Rome has endured as such a bright star. The Church selected certain customs and elements of the culture and preserved a selective history.
This book is a very welcome view from the recieving end of the Legions.
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