Genealogy Books - The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin Classics)

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Good history, not-so-great writing...
Comment: Plutarch provides a superb history concerning the decline and collapse of the Roman Republic,
following the lives of Sulla, Marius, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar and Cicero. The first five were very
powerful soldiers aspiring to the position of dictator, and the final was perhaps the greatest Latin
orator and a lawyer of unparalleled skill. The history is very thorough and definitely worth
reading.
However, Plutarch's writing leaves much to be desired. It is slow and dull for the most
part, and he provides few insights into what he is writing...he only recounts facts and does not
even bother trying to analyze the situation. This can be good, but it makes for dull reading and
you finish the book feeling as if you had just read a textbook.
Recommended for people very
interested in this period, or amateur historians, but not for the lay reader.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Interesting but has Lazy Editing Syndrome
Comment: Plutarch was a Greek historian who wrote in the 2nd Century AD. This work covers the lives of six
key individuals in the twilight of the old Roman Republic from 105-43 BC. Marius and Sulla were
soldier-dictators who first sought to gain one-man rule. They were followed by Crassus, Pompey and
Caesar. These three lives are the best in the book. The final life is Cicero, the lawyer. There
is good military detail on Marius' defeat of the Cimbri, Crassus' defeat at Carrhae and Caesar's
triumph at Pharsalus. The Mithraditic Wars in Asia minor are important but difficult to follow due
to the lack of any maps. There are no great lessons here, other than the eternal struggle for
power. The editor was lazy in this book and should have provided a glossary of key individuals,
since there are too many individuals with similar names. There are also no maps - a major flaw.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Dramatic "Lives" of Plutarch
Comment: Though he lived in the Roman Empire, Plutarch was a classical Greek scholar. He was born in
Chaeronea in central Greece and spent most of his life there. He studied in Athens as a young man
and later wrote on a variety of subjects, including natural science, metaphysics and morals. He also
served in various civic capacities during his life, received a high government appointment in Greece
from Hadrian, and traveled widely.

Plutarch's interest in writing his "Lives" is the character of
the individual, the effects of education and status, the drama of successes and failures, and moral
lessons that can be drawn from them. His focus on character and the moral lessons to be learned from
history is much like Livy, but Plutarch chose to pursue his purpose more directly by writing
biographical sketches of his subjects. These sketches were actually written in pairs, matching what
Plutarch saw as a Greek and Roman whose lives were comparable. For example, he paired Alexander the
Great and Julius Caesar. To most modern readers, this pairing seems rather artificial, and Penguin
has chosen to group the "Lives" by historical period.

Plutarch was not an eyewitness to the events
he records. The six men covered in this book lived 150 to 200 years before these "Lives" were
written. Plutarch is relying on tradition and other historians for his information. Being a Greek
writing after 100 A.D. allows him to be more detached, but his work necessarily reflects the biases
and excesses of his sources. Was Sulla, for example, as thorough a monster as portrayed?

The
"Lives" make wonderful reading. Plutarch had a simple, straightforward style and an superb eye for
the dramatic. The six lives included in "The Fall Of The Roman Republic" are especially well-suited
to his style. If you have any interest in Roman history, or if you just enjoy fascinating stories,
this is not to be missed.

Customer Rating:

Summary: This book rules.
Comment: I loved Plutarch's detailed accounts of the lives of these great Romans. I especially liked his life
of Julius Caesar although I don't agree with him that Caesar, from the beginning, sought to
overthrow the Republic. It might not be politically correct to admire Caesar but I do. He was a man
of careful thought and decisive action. He was a leader of the first order. The other biographies
are equally fascinating.

Customer Rating:

Summary: More of Cicero!
Comment: Like the bloke below, I read this book for school, but for the purposes of ancint history. Yes,
indeed, Marcus Tullius Cicero is the most outstanding life Plutarch saw fit to write of. For an
aspiring lawyer like myself, Cicero embodies desireable traits and wit (although I wouldn't repeat
his joke about the Sphinx being in one witness' house!). Penguin's edition features: Marius, the
dictator Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, and, of course, Caesar. These men are all fascinating by
themselves, but the men of the triumverate stand head and shoulders above the rest. The first such
"triarch" was Pompey. The contemporary reader will find some amusement and eyebrow raising
pleasure at the lively sex lives of these two men. Pompey bit his lovers, while Crassus lived
every single man's dream: in a cave with two slave girls. What Plutarch sets out to accomplish is
to display these men as models--how the lust for ultimate and absolute power was the undoing of
each man. And I'm not being ironic; all these men were destroyed by the enemies they created, the
wars they spawned, or pride they chained themselves to.

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