5/24/2023 0 Comments Rubicon by Tom Holland![]() ![]() Although it still makes for an interesting(ish) listen, and Andrew Sachs is of course very good, that scarcely makes up for the lack of flair which seems to give the book its character. Within the first couple of chapters it became apparent that any deviation from the most basic possible account of the period is missing - the death of the Gracchi, for instance. It turns out that I hadn't missed it - in fact it wasn't there at all! Quite how you could sit down to abridge a book and decide that something which the author considered important enough to name the book after should be left out is beyond me, but it isn't the only thing missing. and its bloody transformation into an empire. Tom Holland s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic. I was badly disappointed, however, when (having listened for ten minutes or so) I had to flick around to see how I'd possibly missed the first of these anecdotes to appear in the text - the story of Caesar crossing the Rubicon which gives the book its name. In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. ![]() Having flirted with bits of the book itself in fits and starts for quite some time, I had been greatly looking forwarded to making my way through Tom Holland's enlivening gift for telling a much larger story through the prism of a fund of anecdotes that you could dine off for a month. ![]()
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