Finished Barbarians: Rebellion and Resistance to the Roman Empire by Stephen P Kershaw
Kershaw has provided us with a more or less chronological overview of Roman history in terms of conflicts the Romans had with what they considered Barbarians. This necessitates a rather broad definition of “barbarians”, but is, never the less, an interesting perspective to Roman history. Many Roman history books tend to minimize or ignore the psychological effect that potential (real or imaginary) barbarian invasions had on the ancient Romans, and how this translated into Roman attitudes, real world politics, and military endeavors. Each chapter is dedicated to a particular “barbarian” entity, such as Pyrrhus of Epirus, Hannibal, Viriathus from Iberia, Jugurtha, Spartacus, various Celtic and Germanic tribes, Mithridites VI, Cleopatra, Vercingetorix, the Parthians, Arminius, Fritigern, Alaric the Goth, Attila the Hun, Boudicca, Decebalus of Dacia, and the Great Jewish Revolt . Unfortunately, the majority of surviving ancient sources were written by the Romans (or the Ancient Greeks), making it hard to provide any new material from the perspective of the Barbarians. Thus, the author doesn’t quite manage to write the book expected from the title or the blurb i.e. a book about Roman history from the perspective of the Barbarians. However, Kershaw does manage to provide more depth to subjects usually covered in less detail in other books. I found the first 6 chapters to be rather weak, but the rest of the book (a further 18 chapters) was more engaging. The book also includes lovely and useful maps at the beginning, which are much appreciated, but the addition of a time line would have been useful as well, especially since large portions of Roman history not dealing with Barbarians is glossed over or omitted.
This is not an academic book, but a popular, general history book. The writing style is accessible and modern (on the odd occasion a bit too modern or colloquial for my taste). In short, a fairly decent and easily digested overview of Roman history that is slightly different from all the other history books about Ancient Rome.
