A knowledgeable, entertaining, generously illustrated survey of the
history and culture of Rome, more or less from Romulus and Remus to
the present, with (inevitably) some large lacunae. Hibbert (Africa
Explored, The Great Mutiny) stresses politics and religion, art and
architecture. He hangs his narrative on the convenient hooks
provided by emperors, popes, and other autocrats, especially the
more colorful ones: Nero, Cola di Rienzo, Alexander VI, Julius II,
Mussolini. He says a good deal about Bramante, Michelangelo, and
Bernini among the artists most closely associated with Rome (though
he neglects Poussin and Piranesi). He spotlights many of the famous
visitors whose lives were changed by Rome - Luther, Gibbon, Goethe,
Henry James - and does a handsome job on the indispensable Great
Moments: the assassination of Julius Caesar, the sack of the city
by the troops of Charles V, the battle between Garibaldi's
Republicans and the French, the liberation by the Allies on June 4,
1944. Unfortunately, that's pretty much where his story ends, so we
get very little sense of Rome as it is today. Hibbert shows us the
Rome of Petrarch and Mazzini, not the Rome of Moravia and Fellini,
of horrendous traffic, notoriously unstable governments, and
increasing anomie: in a word, the whole postwar scene. Still,
Hibbert wants to focus on la cittaeterna, and in this he succeeds
admirably. (Kirkus Reviews)
Traces the history of Rome from the time of the Etruscans to Mussolini, looks at the artists, intellectuals, and religious and political leaders who have shaped its destiny, and examines Roman society.
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