Rome fast & loose

I picked up Robert Hughes’ Rome, A Cultural, Visual, & Personal History, because of a book review I read in some publication.

Thank God I picked it up from the library for free, because it’s such a disjointed, tedious and really annoying effort, that I’d have felt cheated even finding it on Amazon at a discount.

First of all—what is up with writing more than 450 pages of text covering more than 3000 years of civic history…and not providing any maps? Not one freakin’ map to document the growth of the city over those millennia.

I had the same complaint about Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris. But at least Horne didn’t play fast and loose with the actual, you know, history.

And Hughes is just pathetic—as are his editors, apparently. He was principal art critic for Time for years; I'm just wondering where he got to be so sloppy?

My primary examples come early in his narrative as he’s talking about the late Republic and early Empire. He gets names and dates wrong in a big way, changes family relationships and the like.

He makes Tiberius the elder son of Augustus by Livia—which would come as a surprise to his actual father, Tiberius Claudius Nero. (It’s true that Augustus adopted Tiberius, but that’s not what Hughes is saying; he's talking about a blood relationship.)

He claims that Caligula, (r. 37-41 C.E.), built the Tullianum (Mamertine Prison), but then puts the executions of both Jugurtha and Vercingetorix there—stating the latter was beheaded in 46 C.E. The prison dates from the 7^th Century B.C.E. (so, 700 years Before Caligula Emerged), and Vercingetorix was strangled in 46 B.C.E.

(Hughes did get Jugurtha’s death by starvation right, though. And the date. Sort of a nice change.)

I’m not a classicist and yet those things just jump out, and make me wonder what other codswallop he was purveying over the historical periods I really don’t know.

Like “the French Revolution broke out in 1792.” Seriously? Hughes has never heard of Bastille Day?

And, finally—no citing of sources. He’s got a bibliography but apparently neither he nor his editors nor his publisher could be bothered to actually cite the source of his various facts.

Perhaps, given the inaccuracy of those facts, he was just spitballing for the full 450 pages.