Rating: 3 out of 5
Having read both this one and Mary Beard’s ‘SPQR’ recently, I feel that I need to look at them together when commenting. While ‘Rubicon’ provides a structured overview of the years from before Sulla’s rise to dictator down to Octavian’s princeps-ship, I felt quite often that the more varied approach of ‘SPQR’ which jumped backwards and forwards quite often was more fitting for a history which tried to understand the subjecxt.
Contentwise, Prof Beard was often putting the Roman public debate into a modern context, drawing parallels where possible. Even though the same arguments were told in ‘Rubicon’, no such comparisons were made.
I also felt that the writer had been continuously trying to impress the reader with every new sentence which made the delivery of the audiobook quite annoying.
At the same time, the book definitely improved my knowledge of the Roman politics of this time and I enjoyed the lessons it had to pass. But if you were wondering which one to choose from this and ‘SPQR’, go for the other one first unless your specific interest is more illustrated by the political examples of the 70’s, 60’s and 50’s BC.
