The Ruthless Romans and their Horrible Games...
Written: Feb 26 '07 (Updated Feb 27 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Shows the Romans in all their awful ruthlessness...
Cons: ... a bit gruesome as a result!!
The Bottom Line: History horribly brought to life!
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| captaind's Full Review: Horrible Histories: The Ruthless Romans |
The “Horrible Histories” range of books is designed to get kids interested in history by… well, by telling them all the horrible bits as well. The intro to this particular books, “The Ruthless Romans”, actually starts out by telling us how teachers always go on about how wonderful the Romans were, and conveniently ignoring the more atrocious side of the Romans. Actually from what I remember of history lessons, there’s an element of truth in that. This book then focuses not on the “what the Romans did for us” philosophy, but on what made the Roman Empire so devastatingly powerful – their ruthlessness – and also the “entertainment” they enjoyed. So basically what we have here is a brief account of the rise of the Roman Empire, and a long account of the Games that the bloodthirsty Romans enjoyed.
Despite this being designed for kids, the average adult who isn’t a history professor will find this book both entertaining and educational. For instance, do you know why the famous Coliseum is so named? It has nothing to do with its size – in fact, it’s rather small for a Roman arena. Thought you knew a lot about the gladiators? It’s very likely that a lot of what you thought you knew isn’t actually true. There are a lot of accounts retold in this book from various people, including Caesars, gladiators, trainers, slaves, and Christians who were about to be thrown to the lions. The bloodthirstiness of the Romans seemed to know no bounds. Their methods of execution and cruelty were both savage and ingenious, and showed contempt for humans an animals alike. Not a bunch of people you’d like to invite home for tea…
The writing style is humorous and light-hearted, insofar as the material allows. Some of the scenes described are just too horrific (or the attitudes of the victims too noble) for jokes to be made of them, and there are a few appropriately more sombre parts in the book. (Most notably the author draws some undeniable but uncomfortable comparisons to our day.) The text is accompanied by some cartoons (which are frequently very funny), and lots of techniques are employed to stop the book from becoming boring for kids, such as diary excerpts etc being presented on the page as if on a parchment. It’s visually very easy on the eye but the style doesn’t stop the points from getting across – in fact, if anything it enhances the impact of what you read (even, perhaps for an adult reading).
I find the Roman Empire particularly interesting because at no point in history before or since has there been anything quite like it. I already knew a fair bit about the Romans but definitely learned some interesting facts from this book. On the other hand, there were one or two points that I found to be somewhat spurious, though to be fair the book itself admits the fallibility of history books and they not everything in them should be trusted!
Though it’s designed for kids, adults with a passing interest in history will enjoy this book, and though it’s a quick, light read, there’s a lot of information packed into its 128 pages. Not necessarily a book to eat while having dinner though as it does get a little gory at times…
(One of the other things I found interesting about this book is that I could see how much real history was included in ./ influenced the film Gladiator. Many of the events and characters in the movie were inspired by things that really happened.)
Text by Terry Dreary
Illustrations by Martin Brown
Thanks to Arianej for adding this book to the Epinions database for me.
Other Horrible Histories
Horrible Histories: The Awesome Egyptians
Recommended:
Yes
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