'The War That Made the Roman Empire' by Barry Strauss
Started: 12/15/2024. Completed: 12/26/2024.
I listened to the audiobook of Strauss’s The Spartacus War some time ago and remembered it as being quite good. I picked this book up at the local independent bookstore out of curiosity, and honestly, it’s really good despite not being my usual fare. I really enjoyed the work that Strauss put into fleshing out the characters like Cleopatra and Antony in particular. They became more three dimensional and their actions made more sense through Strauss’s lens. The biographical sections of the book were definitely my favorite (no surprise there, give my current occupation).
Strauss has just enough voice to make the book entertaining and engaging, but it never went over the top. I recently read (well, started to read) a biography of a classical figure that had too much voice, to the point where it was completely distracting and took away from the author’s credibility. There was none of that here.
I was surprised to find myself really getting into Antony as a person. Strauss does an excellent job at filling in gaps with various types of evidence to make a more complete picture of him. We may never know the real Antony, but we do know the version that we are familiar with is a mask created by Octavian. In particular, I liked how Strauss noted that Antony liked to be around strong women. When one looks at Octavia, Cleopatra, and what little I know about his first wife, this is evident. Material evidence also supports this: two of these three women appeared on Roman coinage, a place women had never appeared before, to our knowledge. This brings up questions: Antony was around powerful people before. Was he a pushover, a perpetual number 2? A yes-man? Why, then, focus on women? Why not kiss Octavian’s ass? He was perfectly situated to do so. Did he get power hungry? Did he truly believe in preserving the last futile scraps of the Republic? If so, why stay in the East? It’s true there was more money there, but being in Rome would have meant more visibility and more ease of making allies within the city. But perhaps he stayed in the East because he was safer there, or maybe because he loved being Dionysius so much, the counterpart to Cleopatra’s Isis. Was his loss of “Roman-ness” true, or was it just an invention of Octavian?
I don’t know much about Antony. I didn’t before reading this book, other than the fashionable tales, and now I know enough to know how much I DON’T know. I feel drawn to this subject now. Biographies of Antony are few and far between, and I don’t think any of them are actually still in print (there is one that is from a small press that is available on Kindle). I’m curious what the perspectives are in the existing biographies (and kind of curious if there is an audience for a new one).
Another person I enjoyed learning more about was Agrippa, doing so mostly through Strauss’s battle descriptions. Going into reading this book, I knew it would lean more heavily toward military history, and it did in many parts. I admit to kind of glazing over at first when Strauss gets into battle plans, but I recovered when I realized how much you can learn about a person by looking at their actions in battle, their plans, how they treat their men, etc. (*gives Antony the side-eye*). I think because I don’t know very much about military history, I get a bit lost because I don’t know all the vocabulary, and I don’t know what’s important or why. I’m more drawn to questions like “What is the rest of Rome doing while their leaders are at war? Do they even notice? Is life harder in Rome at this time for plebs and others? It’s hard to know, because of course the accounts that survived and have reached us after all these years are from more powerful people. Material culture is hard to come by as well—Pompeii is a treasure trove because so much was preserved under the ash. Other places were destroyed by human hands, and their relics either thrown out, scattered, or ruined. When you and I see trash on the street, we throw it out. But an archaeologist from the future would cry at how much is lost. One has to be a very clever historian to piece all these things together to find answers that are at all reliable.
At any rate, The War That Made the Roman Empire is a thoughtful book that has something in it for everyone. There are bits of military history, social history, and biographies of the people who lived at this turning point in Ancient Roman history.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“Even two thousand years later, we study Augustus for lessons in everything from the rules of power to life hacks. No one looks to Antony for lessons except for bad ones.” (pg 14)
“Had Cleopatra succeeded, we would compare her to a grand strategist like England’s Queen Elizabeth I or to an empire builder like Russia’s Catherine II the Great. Instead, our Cleopatra is sexy when we should be looking for majesty.” (pg 35)
“Methone was only the beginning of Antony’s troubles in the rear.” (sorry, I am 12) (pg 136)
“Romans were, in fact, generally sexist bigots.” (pg 196)
“Antony was a great man, but living in an age of giants, it wasn’t enough to keep him from meeting his match, and repeatedly.” (pg 248)
Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
