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[books 2016] The Empire Stops Here
Sep. 7th, 2016 10:58 am45. The Empire Stops here: A Journey along the Frontiers of the Roman World by Philip Parker
I meant to read this when it came out, forgot about it, and then stumbled across it in the library recently.
I'd wanted to read it because while I have little interest in Rome itself, it's life at the fringes and the hybrid cultures that arose as a result that interests me. I'm all about the liminality.
In that respect, the book is pretty disappointing. It doesn't really work as a travel book either - just brief descriptions of the surviving physical remains of the empire at its fringes. What it does reasonably well is give brief histories of how an when Rome came to be at the ends of the empire, how long they stayed and how it fell. Which is not what I was looking for but provides decent background knowledge. There were just enough interesting factoids to keep me going through the full 500 pages.
It starts in Britain and works its way round to West Africa. There wasn't a lot I didn't already know in the Britain segment but as it got further from my area of knowledge, the more interesting it got.
It's not a bad book, but it kind of doesn't succeed in doing any one thing particularly well, and as an introductory survey of a massive subject it's just too big.
I meant to read this when it came out, forgot about it, and then stumbled across it in the library recently.
I'd wanted to read it because while I have little interest in Rome itself, it's life at the fringes and the hybrid cultures that arose as a result that interests me. I'm all about the liminality.
In that respect, the book is pretty disappointing. It doesn't really work as a travel book either - just brief descriptions of the surviving physical remains of the empire at its fringes. What it does reasonably well is give brief histories of how an when Rome came to be at the ends of the empire, how long they stayed and how it fell. Which is not what I was looking for but provides decent background knowledge. There were just enough interesting factoids to keep me going through the full 500 pages.
It starts in Britain and works its way round to West Africa. There wasn't a lot I didn't already know in the Britain segment but as it got further from my area of knowledge, the more interesting it got.
It's not a bad book, but it kind of doesn't succeed in doing any one thing particularly well, and as an introductory survey of a massive subject it's just too big.
