Violence in Ancient Rome is a consubstantial fact of the very society that had been formed around the Tibetan city. From its mythical genesis at the hands of Romulus and Remus, everything can be reduced to murder. Lucrecia’s would come later, and later Julius Caesar’s. Today we talk about blood in the foruma work by Emma Southon and published in our country by Past & Present.
This work, deep, complex and very well narrated, places us in a Roman world dominated by violence and murder. Thus, join us in this review so that we can unravel what are the strong points (and weaknesses, if any) of this interesting work.
Data sheet
- Title: Blood on the Forum: The Murders of Ancient Rome
- Author: Emma Southton
- Publisher: Past & Present
- Genre: Ancient History
- Number of Pages: 304, paperback binding
- ISBN: 978-84-121383-5-1
- Year: 2020
- All the information on the Past Present page
What we think of “Blood on the Forum”
When I found out that a new work by Emma Southon was going to come into Spanish, my fangs sharpened. Thanks to Past & Present, we have the two works of one of the most interesting female authors on the Anglo-Saxon scene. Thus, in the formal aspects, the publisher has carried out a commendable job when translating this work into Spanish. It is not easy to translate, since it uses a lot of jargon, many references to pop culture and Anglo-Saxon legislation. However, the work has been incredible, and on many occasions it seems that Southon has written the book in perfect Spanish. This very good work is due to the good work of Marc Figueras, to whom we must thank for the care and affection deposited in his translation.
Having said that, it’s time to get down to business, the content of the book itself. In this sense, Emma Southon once again carries out an incredibly good informative task in which he demonstrates again that the History is fun if we know how to tell it. The problem is that in our country we are not very likely to get out of the corseted and rigorous scientific corpus, making us unable to reach people who are looking for much more lightness in the narrative.
His prose is very agile, it is full of references to pop culture and he makes constant jokes that will make us smile on more than one occasion. This makes us forget many times that we are reading a scientific text that has a great job of the sources behind. However, Southon manages to bring the rigor of our discipline, combining it with a pleasant and fun style.
The subject matter is not excessively original: murder in Ancient Rome. Much has been written about the murder of Caesar or the Gracchi. However, his approach is really original, which makes us enjoy this work enormously. In it, he reviews what murder is through different ways of understanding it (either marital or produced by political violence).
Furthermore, it is a work It is very much enjoyed in the company of «Agrippina», Southon’s debut feature. Since one places us in the situation of a woman in a sphere of violence, how was the Julio-Claudia family. Meanwhile “Blood on the Forum” offers us a more panoramic view of violence in general.
So do we recommend it?
You’re going to laugh, you’re going to learn and you’re also going to discover a totally original new way of communicating history. Do you need more to discover what is the book you need this fall?