I’ve found that I cannot read history–I have to listen to it, for the pacing to work for me. (I’m sure this says bad things about my attention span. I can pay very careful attention indeed to scientific minutiae, though! Just… not history.) So when I switched from Kindle to audible on this one, I zipped through it. Whether I retained the information so well as I might have in another format is another story… but a few big picture ideas stuck with me.
I was struck by how non-dynastic Rome really was. Almost none of the Caesars were succeeded by their biological sons. In Rome, it was commonplace apparently for the emperor (at least) to adopt fully grown men as sons for that purpose, and it was often necessary since so many of them either never had children, or never had sons, or were homosexual (openly or otherwise), or what have you. Some were commoners. As the empire got larger and larger, it became increasingly impossible for one emperor to successfully rule it all–which was how it eventually split into east and west, largely under Constantine.
It was also pretty amazing that Diocletian was the most aggressive persecutor of the Christians (though Nero kind of started it by blaming them for the fire in 64 AD), the next uncontested emperor after him, Constantine, actually made Christianity the official religion of Rome. Quite a turnaround in a short period of time.
My rating: ****
Language: none
Violence: none
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
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