Book Review: Pax

 

At the outset, I should say that while I have read quite a lot of fiction set in the Roman Empire (both serious historical fiction and also a fair few mystery series), this is only the second non-fiction history of Rome I have ever read that goes past the death of Augustus, and the first one I can't even remember that well as I read it more than 30 years ago. Thus, I came to this book with a low base of reliable historiographical knowledge about the imperial period of Roman history (although to be fair, the better historical fictions do contain a fair amount of history!)

I picked this one because I am a massive fan of Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook's podcast, The Rest is History, and I thought I might enjoy Holland's writings as much as I do his podcast work. I was not disappointed. I realise now that I probably shouldn't have started with book three of a three-book series, but honestly, it doesn't matter much because there is plenty in here to connect with.

This book kicks off just before the death of Nero (who sounds like a genuine stinker, even given the norms of the time, ratifying the admittedly shallow impression I formed while watching Horrible Histories with my kids) and ends not long after the death of Hadrian (it does venture into the rules of the two emperors who followed, but more as an aside). The start of the book is taken up with the chaotic Year of the Four Emperors, which followed Nero's death, which gives Holland an opportunity to combine social and political analysis with a curiosity about the lives and motivations both of those who sought power and those who didn't.

Holland has a gift for painting these long-dead emperors as complex men with incredible and genuine strengths (in many cases) as well as their own personality traits that impacted how they governed. For me, Vespasian, and his sons Titus and Domitian, emerge with the greatest potency as people, while Holland makes a compelling case that Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian were, together, the authors of Rome's greatest triumphs and indeed of the Pax Romana.

As well as looking at the emperors as people, Holland is of course concerned with a view of the empire as an empire - its shifting sands, the constant vigilance and brutality required to keep it going, its winners and losers (both within and outside Rome itself). The complete destruction of Jerusalem, the less thoroughgoing but still bloody wipeout of the Dacians, the use of total war and its terrible concomitants (rape, wholesale slaughter, and slavery) is never deprecated in this account. Holland makes the point - and it's a good one - that this was a period of time in which conflict and extreme violence in what would later be known as Europe and the Middle East was a continuous reality of almost every life. The imposition of Roman rule, at the end of a bloodied sword, was not pretty, but sometimes did lead to greater stability and greater opportunity for material comforts (for a while) for some regions.

I enjoyed this book immensely, all the more for being read it (audiobook) by Holland himself, whose voice I have always appreciated on The Rest is History. I learned things I did not know and it has whetted my appetite to read more, although I do not think I am going to start thinking about the Roman Empire several times a week as some men allegedly do (but then, in the words of the one of the greatest heroes ever written in fantasy, "I am no man" :-)