At the opening of Anthony Mann's 1964 film The Fall of the Roman Empire, Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius addresses the assembled Governors, Consuls and Princes thus:-
'You have come from the deserts of Egypt, from the mountains of Armenia, from the forests of Gaul and the prairies of Spain. You do not resemble each other, nor do you wear the same clothes, nor sing the same songs, nor worship the same gods.'
The diversity of the characters in this archetypal empire is easily forgotten, but when noted, it can still mislead us. The empire was no multiculture. It was tolerant of cultural diversity, at least until monotheism developed, but in order to enjoy the spoils of Roman life, it was a requirement that you submitted to its laws. If you sought to overthrow its rulers, you had to win the support of those already in their pay, with credible coinage. The principles of Roman society permitted that outsiders might approach, but they might only engage with Rome on Rome's terms. Adopt her ways, and you could aspire to her highest offices.
Thus, Rome recruited the talents of many peoples, and often sent them across many hundreds of miles in its service. An African emperor might wind up in the British Isles, and another proclaimed here, might go on to found a city on the shore of Asia.
At the fringes of empire, the assimilated could look across rivers, walls and seas at other cultures which would never break bread with Rome. This created the first division of Germany; there are still cultural echoes of it today, and at the empire's northernmost reach, Britain was another land whose character would ever afterwards be a home to both northern and southern cultures.
How and why Romans tried to tame this overseas territory, and then withdrew from it, is the story told by this book, diligently pulling together numerous scholarly sources, with references running to seventeen densely filled pages.
I have only a rudimentary knowledge of the subject matter, so there was a great deal in this book for me. Background information to accompany the main body of the text is presented in galleys, to be dipped into at the reader's discretion, and monochrome illustrations are soberly chosen throughout the book.
Its master stroke, however, has nothing to do with its sobriety. The writers have spotted that in the sweep of history, it's the personalities, whether celebrated or obscure, which engage best, so they are what they present first. Every chapter begins with a brief mise-en-scene which reads as a passage from a popular novel, and has the clever effect of setting up the next episode to hook the audience. Being short, these are easily read at the end of the last sitting, rather than at the start of the next. Either way, they do a great job in punctuating the work with dramatic interludes.
Imaginative flourishes are becoming a hallmark of the work of this double-act, but I think this is the first time they've made set-pieces of them. As the Hollywood epics of the 1960s fed history to Saturday audiences framed in Panavision, saturated with Technicolor, and spiced with Taylor or Loren, these books use the power of the potboiler to push us on through the pages.
It's to their credit that Moorhead and Stuttard manage to do this while keeping their scholarship solid.
Now, bring on Cleopatra!
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