Rome, Indro Montanelli
“Rome, the first thousand years” by Indro Montanelli is a relaxed walk through the first millennium of the Roman empire. Montanelli chose this informal and relaxed tone in an attempt to make the content approchable and entertaining and he’s mostly (delightfully) successful. The tone makes the people we meet in the work come alive as faceted indivuduals to a much greater extent than what is often seen from historical works, and it does indeed help in captivating the audience.
However, capturing a thousand years of Rome in 371 pages is no easy feat and in this respect Montanelli only partially succeeds. Portions of the book essentially becomes a list of names and their relationships, sometimes with very little meat on the bone to tie much of anything to the names themselves to. This isn’t really a failing of the author though, considering the material he pretty much pulls off what he can with it.
The last quarter of the book, dealing with the new faith and the disintegration of the empire shows most of these issues quite clearly, while also to some extent showing that the book was written in 1957. This shouldn’t be seen as a deterrant from reading the book though — if history is of interest. Rome has never been so lively and relaxed, and at times, funny, as it is here.