Are We Rome?

Posted on August 27, 2009 by smellincoffee

Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

© 2007 Cullen Murphy
262 pages
Rome,politics
Lead poisons our wine and makes us stupid / Gladiators keep us entertained / More votes cast for idols than for Caesar / The end of empire’s easily explained / It’s carved there in plain Latin, the inscription on the wall: / “Welcome one and all to the decline and fall” / And if your Latin’s rusty, here’s the writing on the wall: / “Welcome one and all to the decline and fall” – “The Decline and Fall”, Fire Aim Ready
The author of Are We Rome begins his work by acknowledging the problems inherent in drawing comparisons between Rome and America: not only that it is overdone and typically done for ideological reasons, but that despite popular opinion, history isn’t so easy to draw lessons from. A state’s strengths and weaknesses are the result of its unique historical situation, and such specific situations don’t typically repeat themselves. At the same time, he maintains, the relationship between America and the ghost of Rome is not a newly-purported one, and there are some lessons that may be learned.
The next five chapters examine five common traits of the American and Roman republics, among them hubris, military matters, privatization of government functions and accompanying corruption, citizens’ relationships with “barbarians”, and “borders”. The last is not chiefly about political borders, but includes cultural influence as well. Murphy comments intelligently on both American and Roman history, and he writes well — and prudently. I tried to be overly sensitive while reading the book to notice any far-fetched or questionable comparisons, and there weren’t any that made themselves obvious. There is no apparent agenda behind Murphy’s writing, and his suggestions in the Epilogue are similarly cautious. The author takes both his subject and his readers seriously, which leads me to recommend it to general readers interested in American politics — whether they are Americans themselves or just mice trying to be wary of the elephant they share close quarters with, if I may use a humorous metaphor I read only recently in a forum.
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The cover features George Washington dressed as Cinncinatus, giving his sword back to the People. Murphy comments that modern tourists who spot the statue are probably oblivious to the Washington/Cinncinatus comparison and think it’s a depiction of George Washington in a sauna reaching for a tower.
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This Week at the Library (26/8)

Posted on August 26, 2009 by smellincoffee
Books this Update:
  • Casebook of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
  • The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama
  • Who Needs God?, Harold Kushner
  • The Japanese Experience, W.G. Beasley
  • Catalina’s Riddle, Steven Saylor
I started the week with an old favorite by returning to the Black Widower series — again reading a collection of stories set at the Milano restaurant where the Black Widower club has its monthly meeting, accompanied by the (seemingly) monthly puzzle to reason through. I don’t know what else to add: the book was as charming and witty as I expect, although there are stronger Widower collections.
Next I read Barack Obama’s political philosophy in The Audacity of Hope. While the book is typically classified as a biography, it is at its essence a political book that uses biographical anecdotes to show the reader how Obama’s life has informed his views. His approach is one of moderate pragmatism combined with determined optimism that we do have the ability to make things work. He seems to want to bring common sense and empathy back to the political sphere , seeing them as having been lost somewhere in the past few decades. The author’s tone seemed honest, approachable, and more moderate than I would have expected. I liked and recommend it.
Who Needs God? was next, written by Harold Kushner and addressing the ethnically nonreligious. Kushner uses the book to defend religion, not the idea of God, but his idea of “religion” is far more broad than you might expect. I liked the author, but I can’t say I agreed that religions alone satisfy the needs they meet in this book.
Moving on to history, I read W.G. Beasley’s The Japanese Experience, a short book spanning most of Japanese history (ending in the 1990s). Although its scope was considerable, the book was more successful than Albert Hourani’s similar History of the Arabs: Beasley seems to have found the right balance between details and narrative, managing to convey a sense of what has happened without ignoring detailed information altogether.
The week ended strongly with Steven Saylor’s Catalina’s Riddle, a mystery-turned-political-thriller set in ancient Rome, during the time of the “Catalina conspiracies”. Populist and exiled patrician Catalina has attracted the fury of Cicero, whose rhetoric toward him is so acerbic that it became the final straw for our main character, Gordianus. Gordianus, having created a successful career for himself as a detective of sorts, decides to move to the country to get away from Roman politics. Unfortunately for him, Rome follows him and Gordianus is dragged into the heart of the conflict — giving Catalina safe haven in his home at Cicero’s request. This is probably my favorite of the Roma sub Rosa books.
Pick of the Week: Casebook of the Black Widowers, Audacity of Hope, and Catalina’s Riddle are all strong contenders, but Catalina’s Riddle was utterly riveting. Perhaps it has advantage in being the last book I read, but it’s definitely memorable.
Next Week:
  • Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals, Shaine Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I’m finally able to follow up on a recommendation from reader Pom Pom: the book has been out of the library since June or so, and finally reappeared.
  • A History of God, Karen Armstrong. I tried reading this in 2006, but I didn’t get far.
  • Roma, Steven Saylor. I’m taking a break from the Roma sub Rosa series to read a similar but unassociated novel by Saylor, this one recounting the thousand-year history of Rome through the eyes of one Roman family.
  • Are We Rome?, Cullen Murphy: a comparison of the United States and Rome.
  • Alternative American Religions, Stephen J. Stein. The book has what appears to be two Amish women holding saxophones and looking mischievous on the inside cover. How I could I resist?
  • The Irony of American History, since I didn’t finish it last week.
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Catalina’s Riddle

Posted on August 25, 2009 by smellincoffee
Rome,Saylor

Catalina’s Riddle

1993 Steven Saylor
430 pages
Returning to Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series was a treat last week, but I did not expect to be as riveted as I was this week while reading Catalina’s Riddle. Our principle character is Gordianus the Finder, and the story is set in between The Arms of Nemesis and The Venus Throw: a friend of Gordianus‘ has died and left him his farm. Discouraged by the political corruption and vileness of Rome, Gordianus has eagerly left his modest home in the city to his son Eco and become a farmer. The change in pace has not left him wholly satisfied: life in the fields is hard work, especially when blight renders the wheat harvest worthless and your neighbors hate you and headless bodies keep showing up on your property.
Although Gordianus tried to leave Rome behind, he soon learns that Rome is inescapable. A rider from the city comes to Gordianus and asks him to give service to Cicero — a small service, given that it was Cicero’s rhetorical abilities that won Gordianus‘ farm for him after his neighbors — family of his late benefactor — sued for it. Gordianus is asked to give refuge to Catalina. That Catalina, a rabble-rousing patrician whose political ideas make the “Optimates” — the leading aristocracy of Rome — froth at the mouth — would need a safe harbor is not surprising. That Cicero would ask for a favor on Catalina’s behalf is puzzling, as Cicero has become the aristocracy’s mouthpiece. Indeed, Cicero’s tactics to discredit Catalina were the final straw for Gordianus in leading him to decide to leave the city.
Unlike the other sub Rosa books, Gordianus is not playing the part of detective. For most of the book, he tends to his farm while the great political battle between Cicero and Catalina takes place in the city. This book almost seems a political thriller: while previous books have connected Gordianus‘ various hired work to political events at the time, none of those events were as big as the “Cataline Conspiracy”. Catalina is accused of planning an insurrection while everywhere ambitious men plot and fill other men’s pockets with silver. While Gordianus is morbidly contemplating the decay of the Republic, he is also contemplating the decaying and beheaded bodies that keep appearing on his property. Who is attempting to intimidate him, and to what end? There is no stability in Rome — no one is completely reliable.
Catalina’s Riddle is nicely done: as usual, Saylor brings historical artifacts and people to life. Rome is a living city: its fear is palpable. That this became a thriller of sorts instead of a mystery was not expected, but very enjoyable. I’d say it’s my favorite of the sub Rosa books thus far. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to complete the series: I only have access to two of the books (Rubicon and Caesar’s Triumph), and those two have several books separating them.
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The Japanese Experience

Posted on August 24, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan

© 1999 W. G. Beasley
299 pages, including glossary and index.
I checked this book out in April 2007. I remember this well, because I tried reading it on April 22. It was Earth Day, and I decided to spend the late afternoon in a field, laying on my back and watching the clouds while occassionally reading from the book and talking to friends. It was a glorious afternoon that ended when I accidently rolled into a patch of stinging nettles. I’d checked the book out then for the same reason I checked it out last week — to prepare myself for a Japanese history class. I didn’t take that class in 2oo7 because it was a night class and I wanted to avoid such a thing, but in the years since I’ve had two night classes with the same instructor and have found them to be mildly tolerable — and this next semester, I will be studying Japanese history on Thursday nights from 5 to 7:30.
Although I have performed well in previous classes with the same instructor, I had the advantange of knowing my subject: European history. My knowledge of Japanese history, or of anything relating to Japanese culture, is extremely limited. I know, for instance, that Shinto and Zen Buddhism were once strong there, that Japan went through a period often described as feudral (to the chagrine of another one of my instructors, a medieval historian who insists feudalism is a uniquley western affair), that it adopted modernization to catch up with the west, and that it was hard-hit by the Depression. Outside of this, though, I am unknowledgable, and so Japan seems as foreign to me as a race from Star Trek. Indeed, there were passages in this book where I might as well have been reading background information for a fantasy story: the names and places have utterly no significance to me. I don’t want to go into class wholly unprepared, though, so I’ve decided to do a little background reading before classes start. (Mine do not start until next week, for those curious. We seem to start later than other universities.)
Beasley offers a short history of Japan from the beginnings of its imperial age to the recession of the 1990s. That’s a lot to go over in only 300 pages, so Beasley doesn’t go into a lot of detail. He tracks political, economic, and cultural changes throughout those hundreds of years, focusing on especially notable leaders and movements. A dominant theme is Japan’s place in Asia — first dominated by China and its culture, and later attempting to reverse the relationship in creating the “Co-Prosperity Economic Sphere”. Despite the breadth of information he has to cover, Beasley delivers a fairly readable narrative that — while having to ignore lots of specifics, I would assume — gives the reader a general impression of how things have proceeded. The book is supplemented with two sets of plates, mostly consisting of artwork: the two lone photographs are from the late 1930s and mid-1940s.
For those who know little of Japan and wish to know a bit more, I reccommend the book.
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Who Needs God?

Posted on August 23, 2009 by smellincoffee

Who Needs God?

© 1989 Harold Kushner
208 pages
In God’s Problem, author Bart Ehrman reccommended Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People and Kushner in general. I decided to follow up on the recommendation and read the strangely-titled Who Needs God this week. I say “strangely titled”, for while Kushner is writing to two audiences — those who have a “spiritual life”, but spurn organized religion, and those who live ethically without regard to ideas of god — the book seems to be aimed more at the former. For Kushner, the ideas of God and religion are one — even though he sees religion as a human construction, formed to meet human needs and doing so through community.
The book consists of chapters detailing religion’s contributions to human happiness, although allowing plenty of room for mentions of its excesses. Some themes include: providing a worldview that makes sense of the world; giving people something to revere, thus allowing for mystery; accounting for suffering; providing community; providing a source of inner strength, and a few others. My problem with this book was not that I don’t think these things aren’t valuable, but that I don’t see them as being the sole property of religion. Confusing the matter is the nebulous definition of religion. If naturalistic humanism does what Kushner claims the world religions do, does that mean it is a religion?
Although I disagree with Kushner on a number of issues in the book, I rather liked reading him: he seems like a kindly old grandfather author. His “mistakes” seem honest, not blind ones made by adherence to ideology. He is definitely more concerned with spirituality, personal growth, and community than he is with perpeutating old ideas, but he does think they have their place in keeping people grounded to their culture. (The extent to which we “need” to associate with our culture is a matter for further thought.) I think if Kushner had defined terms at the beginning, this book would have made a lot more sense. As it is, all I can say is that I disliked some elements and liked some elements. The problem is that they’re so mixed together that I can’t point them out.
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The Audacity of Hope

Posted on August 22, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

© 2006 Barack Obama
375 pages
Knowing my interest in political speeches, a friend of mine asked me in 2005 if I’d ever heard of Barack Obama, who spoke at the 2004 DNC. I hadn’t, of course, but American Rhetoric had a copy of said speech and gave it a listen. I don’t recall my political views at the time: I know I was shifting from a fundamentalist Pentecostal and rabid Republican to questioning the former and not caring about the other. Whatever they were, I enjoyed listening to the speech, and I began watching him. In 2006, I was happy when he announced his decision to run for the office of President: I expected him to be a long-shot candidate, and planned on voting for him. I was surprised by his popularity, and bewildered by the fact that people were singing songs about him on YouTube. Wow. I grew tired of politics last summer, and was uncomfortable with some of his decisions, but I continued to watch his campaign — and when it was announced that he was the winner, I was elated. I stayed up long after my usual bedtime watching speeches and shivering in anticipation the way I used to on Christmas morning. Despite my political cynicism, Obama has a hold on me. He makes me question my jaded assumptions — he tempts me to believing in “America”.
That’s what The Audacity of Hope is principally about, although I expressed the above thoughts to myself weeks ago when writing in my journal, attempting to give voice to the thoughts swirling around in my brain. Its very title appeals to the idealist I once was — and still am, judging by my susceptibility to the president’s message. The book is less about idealism and more about common sense, for the most part. What dominates this book is not his urging the reader to believe in America — although he does — but his attempt to reintroduce common sense and empathy to politics, something that has been missing since ideology began driving political discussion in the late seventies or early eighties. Obama begins the book with a chapter on how things got to the point that they are today, going over political changes from the fifties to the present day. He brings up common sense and empathy, and applies them in following chapters to discussions of values, the Constitution, economic matters, religion, race, political campaigning, foreign affairs, and family matters.
Although the book is classified as a biography, I think this is erroneous. With the exception of “Family”, the chapters are dominated by his discussion of what is — not the story of his life. He does use personal anecdotes to introduce chapters and as occasional illustration, but they aren’t the bulk of the book. The epilogue gives the book its title, as Obama reflects on a sermon he once heard using the phrase ‘Audacity of Hope’:

“The audacity of hope. That was the best of the American spirit, I thought — having the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control — and therefore responsibility — over our own fate. It was that audacity, I thought, that joined us as one people. It was that pervasive spirit of hope that tied my own family’s story to the larger American story, and my own story to those of the voters I sought to represent.”

When I see that phase “despite all the evidence to the contrary”, I’m given pause. It’s certainly idealistic, and therein lies my uncertainty. I believe in idealism — it motivates me. At the same time, I don’t want to be deceived by it. This is an honest book, I think: it may get the biographical label because the author is so present in the book, plainly agonizing over difficult decisions that aren’t so easy to make when the standard is reason and empathy. I can appreciate that — I dislike books written with that sense of moral satisfaction, books like Bush Country and Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. I think people who read this book — who sit down with its author and think about these things as he’s thinking about them — will get a lot out of it. You’d have to approach this book with hostility in mind to come away from it poorly. It is at its heart an honest discussion and I recommend it. At the very least, it will allow the reader to get into the mind of the US President.
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Casebook of the Black Widowers

Posted on August 20, 2009 by smellincoffee

Casebook of the Black Widowers

© 1980 Isaac Asimov
222 pages
Readers who have been with me since last summer know how delighted I was to find the Black Widower mystery series. In the year since, I have checked out of a library or purchased through Amazon every Widower collection I could find. With Casebook of the Black Widowers, I have come to the series’ end for myself, having read the others before. This is not to say I won’t be enjoying them in the future: I chronically re-read my books and Widower solutions are frequently esoteric enough that I can be puzzled all over again.
Although it is last for me, Casebook is actually the third of the collections that gather stories of the Black Widowers social club — a group of intellectuals seven strong (including the waiter, Henry) who meet monthly at the Milano restaurant in New York. Every month’s meal is hosted by a different Widower, and it is customary that he bring a guest. The guest is treated to a fine meal and an evening of “hopefully edifying conversation” for the price of an interview: after the meal is done, the host appoints an inquisitor who “grills” the guest. In the Black Widower tradition, the guest invariably presents a puzzle for the Widowers to reason out a solution. Someone may approach the seated six for help, like an aspiring author did here in “The Backward Look”. At other times, one of the Widowers may spot an unanswered question in the lives of their interviewees, as was the case in “The Cross of Lorraine”. Whatever the question, the Widowers will hash it out, exhausting all of the possibilities until everyone save Henry is stumped. Although the stories all follow this same formula, including Henry seeing the solution that no one else saw, they do not grow tiresome.
The stories are written with Asimov’s characteristic wit and are happily followed by a short afterword. It was as ever enjoyable.
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This Week at the Library (19/7)

Posted on August 19, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Dolphins, Jacques Yves-Cousteau
  • The Force Unleashed, Sean Williams
  • A History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani
  • The Venus Throw, Steven Saylor
  • The Essential Koran, translated and edited by Thomas Clearly.
I began this week with Jacques Yves-Cousteau’s accounts of his dolphin studies onboard the Calypso, including his thoughts on dolphin intelligence and dolphin-human relations, supplemented by plenty of pictures. I found this to be more interesting than his Whales — not because of the topics, but because Cousteau spends more time here writing on what the information means and less of simply recounting the information.
I finished Sean William’s The Force Unleashed next, it being a Star Wars novel set five or so years before A New Hope. The principle character of the novel is Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. Vader has trained Starkiller for many years to be his accomplice in overthrowing the Emperor. The Force Unleashed is part of a multi-media release: this story is also being told in graphic novel and video game form. Although slow at first, it became more enjoyable once the main character was thrown out of an airlock.
Moving on to history, I read A History of the Arab Peoples. Author Albert Hourani begins with Muhammad and ends in the late 1980s, attempting to mention everything in between. There’s a lot of scope here, so detailed information is hard to come by — especially after the rise of the Ottoman Turks. Hourani deals not only with political and religious history, but with geography and social history as well — devoting specific sections to describing what life in the cities was like for people at various periods. I think the book is most suitable for general reference.
I returned to Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series starring Gordianus the Finder, a private eye of sorts. The book’s plot concerns the trial of Marcus Caelius, accused of murdering an Alexandrian philosopher who had come as part of a delegation to lobby on Egypt’s behalf in the Roman senate. The theme of the book is the power of Venus, as nearly every major character in the novel is thrown into the plot through the madness of eros in some way or another. Gordianus, in contrast to the rest of Rome, is driven not by power or lust by by the pursuit of truth — which may or may not feature into the actual trial. As usual, Saylor takes the transcripts of an ancient trial and breathes life into them while giving the readers an enjoyable story.
Throughout the week I read from The Essential Koran, selected readings from the Islamic text. The poetic verses concern the glory of God, urge humans to live justly, and promises justice (and judgement) when the final reckoning comes — and it will, soon. The Arabic may lose something in translation, as most poetry does. It was helpful for me to see some of Islam’s “primary source”.
Pick of the Week: The Venus Throw, Steven Saylor
Quotation of the Week: “The water is always freshest at the mouth of the spring.” – Gordianus the Finder, as written by Steven Saylor in The Venus Throw. This is an idiom similar to “Get it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Next Week:
  • Casebook of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov. Guess who bought this on Amazon last week for $5?
  • The Irony of American History, Reinhold Niebuhr. Over the weekend I listened to a podcast on this man, a Christian theological and political thinker who has inspired both President Obama and Senator John McCain. Niebuhr came up in other podcasts from the same source, so my curiosity was picqued.
  • The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan, W.G. Beasley. I’m checking this book out in prepration for a Japanese history course I’m taking this fall.
  • The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama.
  • Catalina’s Riddle, Steven Saylor
  • Who Needs God?, Harold Kushner. A Conservative rabbi writes to people who are “spiritual, but not religious”.
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The Essential Koran

Posted on August 19, 2009 by smellincoffee
The Essential Koran — the Heart of Islam: An Introductory Selection of Readings from the Koran
© 1994 trans. and edited by Thomas Cleary
202 pages
I was somewhat reluctant to include this as a TWATL post given its nature — poetic verse, rather religious or not, seems as if it should be appreciated bit by bit over a long period of time rather than “consumed” all in one go — but decided to comment on it regardless. I read it bit by bit over the course of a week, as I’ve done with some poetry and short story collections in the past. Although I’ve read a few books reading Islam, I’ve never read the Koran itself. It seemed appropriate that I remedy that situation.
Although the Koran is often compared to the Judeo-Christian bible, its format is very different. Rather than being a collection of many works (mostly prose), the Koran is a collection of poectic verse that — as the stories go — an Arab named Muhammed heard delivered from an angel and repeated for the benefit of his people, eventually converting the verse into written form and thus producing the Koran. Like most poetry, I suspect it loses a lot in translation, claims to the majesty of Arabic aside. The Essential Koran is composed of bits and pieces of the Koran, so I’m probably not getting the full effect.
The verses encourage humanity to worship God and love wisdom while promising retribution for those that do not. The religion that emerges in this is one similar to that promoted by some of the Hebrew prophets: both urge people to purify their inner life by believing only in the religion of God — not in “man-made” beliefs like the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus or asceticism. Most of the verses in The Essential Koran either praise God or urge humans to live justly. Those who love the truth and walk in the light will see their reward in a Garden of Paradise, while those who spurn it will be punished with fire. (Middle-eastern dieties and fire…) At times it seems the eternal Fire is reserved only for the fantastically evil, those who realize what Goodness is and decide to do evil just to be spiteful — but then there are verses that say God is blinding people to light and that these people are beyond help.
Most of the book is lost on a theistic skeptic like myself, but I could enjoy some of the aesthetic quality of the verse and the ideas behind some of them. Some of the references confused me all together, like the sura that says Rome is defeated but will emerge victorious in a few years’ time. What does this mean? Why is Muhammed concerned with Rome? Overall I’m satisfied that I read this, as it serves as prime-source material for things I’ve heard about Islam but have never proven for myself, like Mohammad’s opinions on Jesus.
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The Venus Throw

Posted on August 18, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Venus Throw

© 1995 Steven Saylor
308 pages
Back during the spring I began enjoying Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series, depicting life during Rome as it passes from republic to empire through the adventures of Gordianus the Finder, ancient Rome’s private eye. This book is set some 20+ years after the last story in The House of the Vestals, which I read last: young Eco, who was once a teenager, is now a man in his thirties following in his father’s footsteps. Gordianus‘ family has expanded in the meantime: he has another adopted son in the Roman army, serving as secretary to Julius Caesar in Gaul, and a daughter by his slave-turned-wife, Bethesda. Gordianus has retired from his detective work, although he takes the odd case now and then to keep himself busy.
The book begins with an old Alexandrian philosophy showing up at Gordianus‘ door: he wants Gordianus‘ help staying alive. He is the only survivor of a delegation once a hundred strong that sailed from Egypt to Rome to lobby on Egypt’s behalf, hoping to keep it free from growing Roman domination. After barely surviving a massacre upon landfall, he and his compatriots have been picked off one by one — even after arriving in Roma itself. Gordianus is in no shape to help him: he has no influence in the Senate beyond being on friendly terms with Cicero, and the philosopher’s enemies are powerful indeed. Before the night is over, he will be dead. A scandalous patrician woman (Clodia Pulcher Tertia) comes to Gordianus and insists that she knows who the murderer was — and she wants him to find the evidence that will convince the courts. Pressured by her feminine wiles, her silver, and — more notably in Gordianus‘ case, since he is the epitome of Roman virtue — his guilt at having turned the old philosopher away, Gordianus agrees. Thus begins the plot of our novel.
There is a strong theme in this book, that of the power of Venus — love, or more specifically eros: passionate love that drives mortals and gods alike mad. With the exception of Gordianus and his family, every major character in this book is pushed into the plot through eros. It is not an accident that the plot is set during a religious festival about the same subject. Venus, not philosophic virtue, dominates the minds of these Romans: one of the main characters keeps a massive statue of Venus in her backyard — the same that graces the cover of the book, which made the elderly librarian volunteer give it a double-take when he checked it out.
Gordianus keeps different statues in his yard, notably a beautiful statue of Minevera — the goddess of wisdom, justice, and in Gordianus‘ case, truth. He is neither a patrician nor a philosopher, but he keeps himself true to his own sense of virtue — one that is properly pious for his time, but admirable to 21st century readers. For all of the silver Clodia offers him, he seeks the truth of what happened — even if what happened isn’t what he or anyone else would have suspected. As usual, Saylor has delivered a very enjoyable narrative that makes ancient Rome live once more, blending historical details with a fascinating story.
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