Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic By Tom Holland

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

By Tom Holland

This is Mr. Holland's 4th book in this review series, in our first year I reviewed Persian Fire and more recently I reviewed In the Shadow of the Sword and Millennium. While I would ask that no one look at my first-year reviews, I do urge everyone to read the books I've mentioned here. Since it's been so long, let's go back over who Mr. Holland is. Tom Holland was born January 5th, 1968 in Oxfordshire and brought up in the village of Broad Chalke, England. He attended Queen's College, Cambridge, and graduated with a double first. He headed over to Oxford and began work on a Ph.D. crafting a dissertation on Lord Byron but fed up with being a starving student turned to writing for a living. His first books actually used his research on Lord Byron (I could see Lord Byron himself as a vampire to be honest, especially with the modern interpretation of vampires being highly id-driven) to craft a pair of Gothic Horror novels about vampires. In fact, using his historic knowledge to create supernatural horror books swiftly became a calling card of his, and doing research for his last fiction book The Bone Hunter, led to reigniting his passion for antiquity and he resolved to turn to nonfiction. This led to him being involved in documentaries like Dinosaurs, Myths, and Monsters, ISIS the Origins and Violence and Islam: The Untold Story, which was based on one of his nonfiction works. He currently lives in London with his wife and two daughters. Rubicon, the topic of today's review, was actually his first nonfiction book published in 2003 by Random House.

There is no ancient civilization that holds the imagination and focus of the western world like the Roman Empire. Perhaps because it's one of the common roots of western civilization, maybe it's the sheer amount of history from its thousand-year existence, or the vibrant color and savagery of that history juxtaposed on an obsession with law and order, or that fact that until recently it was the closest that Europe had to a united government in history. Rubicon focuses on the period where Rome transitioned from a city-state republic with a large subservient empire to an empire ruled from the city of Rome by an Emperor. To explain what I mean by that, I'm going to steal a metaphor used recently by a friend of mine. Imagine that the United States was ruled by the city council of Washington D.C with the Mayor serving as the executive (oh man and you thought the late ’80s were insane in our reality imagine how this would have gone down). On top of that, only people who are awarded residency of the city by that council and their descendants, who are physically present in the city on the day of elections are allowed to vote. You can imagine the challenge of administering a continent with a city government but that's exactly what the Romans were attempting and as Mr. Holland shows us the Republic simply wasn't to stand up the stress. Of course, that's not the only issue bringing the firestorm about to engulf the entire Mediterranean world. There was also the issue of the character of the Romans, especially their upper class, and how that very character that had gained them control of the world as they knew it also caused them to turn on each other and almost burn it all down around their ears. If there wasn't enough wood on this fire, there were also the resentments and simmering social issues of the city and Italy. Because the lower classes had a thing or two to say about this as well and so did the men and women of the other cities of Italy, many of whom had provided the soldiers, ships, and money to gain those impressive conquests and damn it all they wanted their fair cut of the spoils! But! There is still more fuel for the flames here! Because on top of that was a West-East conflict, which fueled Roman anxieties, paranoia, greed, and above all else ambition. Because if there was one thing that served as a spark and oil to this towering metaphorical tower of wood (I get what you mean but I feel like this metaphor got a bit bigger than originally intended and became difficult to manage...oooooh kinda like the Roman Empire at this time in history), it was ambition because for the first time in history all the power and wealth of the nations of the Mediterranean was made the stakes of a single game. A game that would bring the kind of fame that rings down through the millennia to even the losers of the conflict and to the winners? Even greater fame and power over millions of lives and wealth to match.

Mr. Holland sets the stage in the opening of the book, explaining the belief that the Romans had in the prophecy of the Sybil, which was a kind of oracle. The Romans had a story that a woman appeared to the last king of Rome, offering to sell him 9 books for an incredibly high price. He refused laughingly. Her response was to burn 3 of them and offer to sell him 6 books for the same price, disturbed he refused again, only to see her burn another 3. Feeling panic that he had already made a terrible mistake he offered her anything she wanted for the last 3 books. They were books of prophecy of terrible dangers to the city of Rome and how doom could be averted. Because unlike the Greeks, the Romans believe the point of prophecy was to avert the future, otherwise what was the point of a prophecy in the first place? (The Sarah Conner approach personally I find it a bit more useful than going mad from accidentally murdering one of my parents) The prophecies themselves were treated as state secrets, the books hidden away in the main temple of Jupiter, and only accessible to a specific priest and his apprentice. They were only to be opened and read in the gravest of times. The prophecies were not to be copied or uttered out loud, only the remedies that the book suggested were written down and carried out post-haste. This didn't stop things from getting out although and there was more than one oracle in the ancient world. So as Rome grew in power and reach, as army after army was shattered by the legions and great powers fell one after another whispers spread. That the doom of Rome wouldn't be found on foreign lands and the greatest danger to Rome wasn't from without but from within. That Rome's own sons would be the ones to set the Republic ablaze and tear everything down. (Isn’t that how it always feels though? Things seem to rot from inside {I think Carthage, the Rus, the British Saxons to name a few would disagree, there are plenty of states and cultures destroyed by outside forces})

Mr. Holland starts of course with the system under strain and everyone knowing it but resisting reforms as too radical and unthinkable. Part of that was that the reforms would involve the wealthy and powerful giving things up, through actions like land reform and the poorest Romans gaining subsidized food and clothes. These reforms were championed by people in the noble classes but not by the majority of the noble class, the most notable reformers being the Gracchi brothers, who were basically murdered in the streets to prevent their programs from happening. From there Mr. Holland takes us to the conflict between successful generals Marius and Sulla. Italy had just exploded into rebellion, as the Italian states grew increasingly frustrated at carrying the burden of empire but not reaping the rewards. Sulla would show his abilities in putting this rebellion down but right as he finished a greater war with greater profits would ignite. At this point, Rome had an empire in the East, over the greek states in what is today Greece and parts of Turkey. However, there was foreign resistance led by Mithridates, who convinced Roman subjects to rebel and join him by murdering over 80,000 Roman citizens. Both Marius and Sulla, wildly successful military commanders fought to be elected to the post of consol and therefore leader of the army to put down Mithridates and more importantly, plunder the wealthy east. Sulla won but was stripped of his command after he left Rome. (wait did they really just decide to oust the person who had a huge army at his command and was about to head to war? {Even better, it was the army he had trained and lead in a prior war}) His reaction was to launch a military coup(like you do), which would lead to a military dictatorship and in generations ever after a whisper in the back of the head of every great Roman “If Sulla could do it... Why not you?” One of those Romans was a young man, who came within inches of being executed by Sulla but was spared by the intervention of his mother. Despite sparing him, Sulla predicted this young man was going to be nothing but trouble. Since the young man we're talking about is Julius Caesar, entire nations would end up agreeing with Sulla.

As you might have guessed, Julius Caesar does take center stage in the book but I do like how Mr. Holland is able to keep Caesar from monopolizing the book. Instead, he takes pains to show us the other people involved in this drama who would swing from allies, neutrals to enemies, and back throughout the climax of the multi-generational conflict of how the Roman Empire was going to be ruled and by who. It's here in the book that we go from a system under strain, to one that has simply snapped under pressure and everyone is brawling in the wreckage for the right to be the man who dictates the new reality. So Mr. Holland takes us through the lives of other major players in the conflict and even the supporting players. We are taken through the careers of men like Cato, Cicero, Senators of Rome who impossibly sought to maintain the old system and turn back the clock (why does this always feel like a bad idea?). Men like Crassus, Mark Antony, and Clodius who didn't care about the system or what replaced it so much as what power and profit they could wring from it (also a bad idea..). It's not just the Romans we look at, Mr. Holland takes time to look at others who played a role like Cleopatra, although he doesn't spend too much time on the foreign-born players in this drama. The man I learned most about was Pompey, who the Romans called Pompey the great. For most people, Pompey is kind of an also-ran when compared to Caesar but Mr. Holland gives Caesar's rival here the space to examine his life and show his accomplishments which are many and impressive. From recruiting his own army at the age of 25 and leading it on a string of victories from Spain to Syria until losing out finally to Caesar late in his life. Mr. Holland is also careful to provide context and the cultural information to show why these men and women made the decisions they did and how because of the times and places they were part of, certain decisions just weren't realistic or doable.

I don't have to tell you that we live in tense times, but I do think we should resist the urge to draw any parallels directly. For one thing, our system is a lot more robust and we're not fighting a civil war in our very living rooms. In fact, I would argue that the 1960s and 1850s were much tenser times for the US specifically. Now I know that's not at all comforting to the people suffering right here and now but I believe it will not be in vain and there will be a better tomorrow. So do not surrender to despair just yet readers. That said that doesn't mean we can't take lessons from this period of time and that it doesn't have relevance to us. What we can learn from this book is that traditions, customs, and even the systems of law and government that we use to maintain our lives are things that serve a purpose. They are a means, not an end (in other words don’t keep doing the same thing just because that's how it's always been done). As such they must change and be changed with the times and the demands of those times. There is no system that cannot be improved or reformed to work better and we resist any reform when we demand that the world stop changing... That's when we're most at risk of losing it all and having the kind of breakdowns that lead to men like Sulla and Caesar marching armies in the streets. This is a lesson our forefathers knew and one we need to relearn. If nothing else Rubicon serves as a valuable testament to the need for that lesson. Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland gets an A. Read it and remember to vote this year. (Hey guest editor Mr. Davis here: As someone who’s pay and livelihood depends largely on the whims of elected officials please don’t get stuck on just the national elections. Check your local candidates see what they stand for all the way down to the city council and/or school board, there are some challenges I am facing now that might have been a little easier if local officials had followed the recommended plans)

I like to thank our guest reviewer, Mr. Davis, for his hard work this week. Our regular editor Dr. Allen will be joining us next week according to the capture teams. The Rubicon was selected by our ever-wise patrons, who vote every month on what books get reviewed and at higher levels get to select what books I buy for future reviews. The lowest level which grants you a vote on book reviews, theme months and more is only a 1$ a month at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Hope to see you there! Next week, we return to the world of French comic books with Dwarves Vol II by Nicolas Jarry. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading!

Green text is your editor Mr. Davis
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders