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Showing results for tags 'book review'.
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Professor Peter T. Struck’s Divination and Human Nature takes the reader on a guided tour of ancient philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonist Iamblichus) and their opinions regarding “natural” divination, as opposed to “technical” divination such as the reading of entrails, described as “the application of…logic to empirically gathered external signs” (p 16). The purpose of natural divination varies, but its nature remains strikingly similar among the philosophers examined: “the immediate apperception of something without the intervention of any reasoning process,” (p 20) knowledge which “arrives to us by ways other than self-conscious, goal-directed inferential chains of thought” (p 31), “an epiphenomenon of human anatomy and cognition (p 177), or, simply put, “intuition.” ...continue to the full review of Divination and Human Nature by Peter T. Struck
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Let me ask you a question. Do you love Roman history? If so, how many of you secretly dream of being there, two thousand years ago, living a life far removed from the modern rat race? Who would you want be I wonder? Perhaps a crafty slave like Frankie Howerd's Lurcio. Maybe a man of action like Russell Crowe's Maximus. Or a sophisticated and sexually ambiguous patrician like Lawrence Olivier's Crassus. Or perhaps like the vast majority of ancient Romans in real life, take on the world and make a success of yourself in latin society. If so, this is exactly the place to be, for Marcus Sidonius Falx has written down his guide to getting somewhere in ancient life - Welcone to Release Your Inner Roman... ...continue to the full review of Release Your Inner Roman by Jerry Toner
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Imagine yourself entering the public seats of a Roman arena. Would you expect a days entertainment? Displays of martial courage? Would you become excited and spellbound by the spill of blood? Or stare horrified at the sight of men mauled and mangled by wild animals? All these emotions are attested to in the Roman sources. Today we're alternately appalled and fascinated by the subject, noting parallels with modern attitudes and behaviour, wondering whether the love of violent competition is really so alien to us. Welcome to Gladiators & Beast Hunts, a book by Dr Christopher Epplett. The first impression is largely helped by the books cover, showing mosiac imagery many will be familiar with. Presentation maintains the standards we have come to expect of the publisher and the colour photographs in the centre section are both relevant and illuminating... ...continue to the review of Gladiators & Beasthunts by Christopher Epplett
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Describe Roman Italy. Go on, I dare you. Chances are you're hopelessly wrong. We have just left behind a century of global conflict and competition between powerful political idealism. Vast industrial empires and centralised control. With such an astonishing hold over a vast swathe of the Known World is it any wonder we so readily connect with the Romans? Or at least we think we do. Our preconceptions are incredibly distorted by recent history and contemporary politics. If you don't believe me, A Companion To Roman Italy is a book that will teach you just how little you know... ...continue to the review of A Companion to Roman Italy by Alison E. Cooley -
Describe Roman Italy. Go on, I dare you. Chances are you're hopelessly wrong. We have just left behind a century of global conflict and competition between powerful political idealism. Vast industrial empires and centralised control. With such an astonishing hold over a vast swathe of the Known World is it any wonder we so readily connect with the Romans? Or at least we think we do. Our preconceptions are incredibly distorted by recent history and contemporary politics. If you don't believe me, A Companion To Roman Italy is a book that will teach you just how little you know... ...continue to the review of A Companion to Roman Italy by Alison E. Cooley
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Reference books do not often make for popular reading. Many are too thick and cumbersome, their dusty pages clogged with statistics and data, lengthy quotations and technical prose. Good for academics and universities, yes. Worthy of a glance or two in passing, certainly. But to buy? Usually I avoid it. After all, why buy an encyclopaedia of nineteenth-century Russian literature when one could read Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky? Why buy a compendium of ancient battles when one could read Tacitus or Xenophon or Thucydides, or any number of modern classicists? Such were my thoughts before reading Don Taylor’s Roman Empire at War: A Compendium of Battles from 31 BC to AD 565. Although my preconceptions found some basis in reality, I admit I was pleasantly surprised by this little book – and by little I mean little! Numbering only 215 pages, it surely must rank among the most concise compendiums ever written... ...continue to the review of Empire at War: A Compendium of Roman Battles by Don Taylor
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Nick Brown is a very talented storyteller! The Earthly Gods, published in 2016, grabs you early on and holds you fast until the final pages, which fly by way too quickly. It`s a sad day to finally put it aside. This volume is the sixth in the Agent of Rome series and is undoubtedly one of his best. I found the intrigue and suspense of The Earthly Gods more than compensated for the lack of flying pila, clashing shields, and the sights and sounds of battle... ...continue to the review of The Earthly Gods: Agent of Rome 6 by Nick Brown -
Imagine for a moment that by chance you happened to be at the Roman arena on lunchtime, expecting some light entertainment. What would you see, hear, or experience? Slaves providing their masters with satisfactory performance, proving that even they could be courageous, or perhaps seeing men thrown to beasts, and later, to the whim of the crowd.This sort of imagery is common enough when dealing with the Romans. When the time comes to learn about their culture, their daily business, their daily lives, the arena is unavoidable. It looms large in the popular image, and for that matter, in the Roman consciousness too.... ...read the full review of Roman Sports and Spectacles by Anne Mahoney
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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline Review by Thomas A. Timmes Cline’s challenge in 1177 B.C. is to examine the causes of the near simultaneous destruction and disappearance of five flourishing eastern Mediterranean civilizations including their 47 largest settlements. What calamity or series of calamities occurred at roughly the same time? This is the task the author explores using ancient texts, archeology, new technology, new information, and a lot of connecting the dots. Reading this book is much like reading a detective novel. There is suspense, examination of the evidence, reasoning, speculations, and a conclusion... ...continue to the full review of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
