Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland












Published in 2005 by Anchor

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic is a well-written fact-filled narrative interpretation of the end of the Roman Republic. Interpretation? Of course - all history books are the author's interpretation. Holland has his biases, but it does not distract from the power of the book. With the exception of a slow bit in the middle, this is an entertaining read and worthy to sit on the shelf next to other histories of Rome.

 I wholeheartedly recommend this one for enthusiasts (his spin on things should pique your interest) and also for newcomers to Roman history. It is a fine springboard for further study.
Tom Holland
That being said, I do have a little bone to pick with the author, on a topic that has little bearing on the text as a whole. On p. 21 (paperback) Holland claims that the Circus Maximus, the chariot racetrack, was the largest sports arena in the world (200,000 spectators) and it still holds that title today. That is an oft-repeated by British authors and documentaries. As an Indianapolis resident I must correct this - the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has permanent seats for more more than 250,000 and more than 400,000 have been known to cram in to the track in May to watch the Indy 500. Around 300,000 come to the Brickyard 400 as well.

 I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

 This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.

Reviewed on October 22, 2007.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

IN the PRESENCE of MINE ENEMIES: SEVEN YEARS as a POW in NORTH VIETNAM by Howard and Phyllis Rutledge

Image
Originally published in 1973. Published in 1977 by Commission Press . Co-written with Mel and Lyla White In the Presence of Mine Enemies is, in reality, two kinds of books. It is a biography of Captain Howard Rutledge's (1928-1984) time in the prisoner of war camp nicknamed Hanoi Hilton by its prisoners in North Vietnam from 1965-1973. It is also a faith tract. The book gets right to the point - Rutledge is shot down in the fifth paragraph and captured by the sixth page. The book rarely gets bogged down in technical details and is very approachable by any reader. More on this in a moment. The descriptions of his captivity, such as the food, how the prisoners managed to communicate with one another, how they mapped out the prison despite no one ever managing to see all of it, the physical torture, the difficulty of solitary confinement, and the joy of finally being able to be with another prisoner are all told in sufficient - but not grotesque - detail. If you are looking for any ...
Read more

NIGHTSHADE (a Catalina novel book one)(audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Image
Published by Little, Brown, and Company in 2025 Read by Will Damron. Duration: 9 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Michael Connelly takes a break from his Lincoln Lawyer series, his Harry Bosch series, and his Detective Ballard series to explore something new - Catalina Island. Los Angeles County has jurisdiction over Catalina, a 75 square mile island a little more than 20 miles from mainland Los Angeles. Almost everyone takes the express ferry to Catalina, a boat ride that takes a little more than an hour.  The separation means that Catalina is a very different place than Los Angeles. Cars are rare - almost everyone drives golf carts or walks. Less than 5,000 permanent residents live on the 75 square mile island and the pace of life is quite a bit slower. It is widely believed that the Los Angeles Sheriff Department sends its screw up cops to Catalina for a little more seasoning or to find a safer place to make enough mistakes for the department to boot them out. Nightshade ...
Read more

DOWN ALONG with THAT DEVIL'S BONES: A RECKONING with MONUMENTS, MEMORY, and the LEGACY of WHITE SUPREMACY (audiobook) by Connor Towne O'Neill

Image
  Published in 2020 by Workman Publishing. Read by Geoffrey Cantor. Duration: 7 hours, 25 minutes. Unabridged. Connor Towne O'Neill was attending the 50th anniversary recognition of the Selma to Montgomery March when he discovered something unexpected. The Selma to Montgomery march ended when Alabama State Troopers joined local deputies at the Edmund Pettus bridge and beat them until they retreated. The bridge is named for a Confederate General and a Grand Dragon of the Alabama KKK. O'Neill was looking for a place to park and drove into a graveyard. In the graveyard, he discovered a group prepping a part of the graveyard for the re-installation of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest (the original had been stolen) in the graveyard. It was on a piece of property owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the middle of the graveyard. O'Neill sensed that this was the more powerful story, no matter how dramatic that moment on the bridge had been 50 years earlier. He decide...
Read more

OUR SUBWAY BABY (audiobook) by Peter Mercurio

Image
Published in 2020 by Listening Library. Read by the author, Peter Mercurio. Duration: 7 minutes. Unabridged. I first heard about this story and the book Our Subway Baby in a social media post so I searched out the book. I didn't realize it was a book for children when I started searching, but it's a sweet little book. The book starts with Danny Stewart spotting a newborn infant boy that was abandoned in the corner of a New York subway station. Stewart contacts the police, but also his boyfriend, Peter Mercurio, wondering if this was somehow fate. After all, they could never have children, but here is a child in need. The couple keeps tabs of the baby and eventually adopt him. Their families and friends help them gather all of the things parents would need and baby Kevin finally joins his family. The story is told from the point of view of Peter, as if he were talking to a young Kevin and telling him how Kevin found his way to his home. The language is simplified and the tricky...
Read more

SONGS of AMERICA: PATRIOTISM, PROTEST, and the MUSIC THAT MADE a NATION (audiobook) by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

Image
Published in 2019 by Random House Audio. Read by the authors, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw. Duration: 7 hours, 40 minutes. Unabridged. It turn out that historian Jon Meacham and country music star Tim McGraw are neighbors. They decided to work together on Songs of America , a book that looks at the role of music in American politics. They start with songs of the Revolution and work their way forward, hitting songs you've heard of such as The National Anthem (War of 1812) and The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Civil War) and songs you've most likely never heard of.  Not every song is war related. For example, the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. There is a nicely done section comparing two still-popular songs from the 1980s - Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen and Proud to Be an American by Lee Greenwood.  I particularly liked the juxtaposition of two Vietnam era songs: The Ballad of the Green Berets by Sgt Barry Sadler (1966) and Fortunate Son by Creeden...
Read more

BATMAN: ONE BAD DAY - MR. FREEZE (graphic novel) by Gerry Duggan

Image
Published in 2023 by DC Comics. Written by Gerry Duggan Art by Matteo Scalera and Deron Bennett. Synopsis Inspired by the "spirit of Christmas," Batman, Robin, and Alfred discuss the possibility that a hardened criminal can actually reform. Batman and Robin decide to reach out to Mr. Freeze and offer to fund his research.  Mr. Freeze has always justifies his crime sprees with the rationalization that he needs the things he steals for his research. He put his wife in a frozen stasis in order to stop the progression of a fatal disease and the research to fight this disease is incredibly expensive and sometimes requires exotic materials.  Now, Batman has provided everything Mr. Freeze needs in an old LexCorp lab. T heoretically, this should put an end to Mr. Freeze's criminal career, right? It turns out that Mr. Freeze is far more complicated and far more creepy than anyone knew... My Review I read all of the graphic novels in the One Bad Day Series this summer and I think ...
Read more

COMRADES in ARMS (kindle)(short story) by Kevin J. Anderson

Image
Published in 2014 by WordFire Press My Synopsis: Veteran (and prolific) author Kevin J. Anderson delivers a compelling short story/novella in the tradition of the golden age of sci-fi with Comrades in Arms .  Humanity is at war with an insectoid race that uses psychic energy to create weapons and even peer into the future.  The story is set in an asteroid belt way out in the middle of nowhere. Some of the asteroids have breathable atmospheres, but they're not comfortable for either race to live on for long.  Even though the asteroids have limited value, there is no way either side will give them up so the war has ground itself into a stalemate of sorts.  However, humanity has developed a new weapon that is starting to turn the tide. Mortally wounded humans are brought back to the base and given the Robocop treatment. Their bodies are refitted with armored limbs, organs are replaced, and a "werewolf trigger" is installed deep in the brain. The werewolf trigger sets th...
Read more

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
Originally published in 1976. Synopsis In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick , Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children.  In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected. The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don...
Read more

LIVE LONG and...WHAT I LEARNED ALONG the WAY (audiobook) by William Shatner and David Fisher

Image
Published by Macmillan Audion in 2018. Read by the author, William Shatner. Duration: 5 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged William Shatner gets personal in this look back at his life. He offers advice, although to be fair you have to know his first piece of advice - don't take his advice. Why not? Because his life is his life and you are you and the situations are different. That being said, he does offer one really good piece of advice - say "yes" to new opportunities. Besides the advice, he fills the book with stories of his life and discussions of situations he faced and how he dealt with them. He is brutally honest about his childhood and his lifelong inability to make real friends. Leonard Nimoy was one of his few friends, but at the end of his life Nimoy had refused to talk with him for five years. The author, undoubtedly being overly dramatic - and also interesting. Sometimes he drifts into sort "old man" ramblings about life in general and repeats himself, bu...
Read more

WHERE IT HURTS (Gus Murphy #1) (audiobook) by Reed Farrel Coleman

Image
Published in 2016 by Blackstone Audio Read by Chris Andrew Ciulla Duration: 10 hours, 31 minutes Unabridged In Where It Hurts , Gus Murphy is a retired cop whose life has completely fallen apart after the sudden death of his son due to an undiagnosed heart problem. His marriage fell apart, he quit the force and now works in a hotel as security and a shuttle van driver in exchange for a room. A low-level mobster-type seeks him out to hire him as a private detective to look into the brutal death of his son by torture. Murphy is not particularly thrilled to look into it and emphasizes that he is not a private detective. But, his emotions get the best of him because this mobster is also a dad who has lost his son so he agrees to look into it, figuring that he would uncover nothing. But, it starts to look like the police just gave a cursory investigation and missed some serious clues. When his "client" shows up dead, Gus Murphy knows that he has stumbled into something that h...
Read more