Reading My Way Through Roman Britain, Part 1
"Hadrian's wall at Greenhead Lough", with thanks to Velella and Creative Commons
Thanks to the luck of the book-review draw, I recently ended up reading two books on Roman Britain back-to-back.* The two books are very different. Guy de la Bédoyère's The Real Lives of Roman Britain is an attempt to look at the period of Roman occupation in terms of individual human experience--a frustrating endeavor because there is surprisingly little evidence. Charlotte Higgins's Under Another Sky: Journeys In Roman Britain is a more personal attempt to understand the Roman occupation and its continuing influence on Britain's sense of history and identity--think VW bus and hiking Hadrian's Wall.** Both were fascinating; taken together they gave me a rich picture of a period I mistakenly thought I knew something about.
My reviews of both books will appear in coming posts. In the meantime, here are some of the things that surprised me:
- Rome controlled Britain for 360 years, assuming a floating definition of control. That's almost twice as long as Britain ruled India.
- Britain was a hotbed of revolt against Rome for most of those 360 years. I knew about Boudica, the female ruler who led an uprising against the Romans in 61 CE.*** And because I knew about Boudica I was vaguely aware that the Druid stronghold at Mona (modern Anglesey) was believed to harbor dangerous rebels. But I knew nothing about, for example, the Gallic Empire, a short-lived break-away regime founded by Marcus Cassianus Latinus Postumus ***in 259 CE in Britain's northwestern-provinces. Postumus and his successors borrowed all the attributes of a "real" Roman emperor, including coins minted in their names, consulships, assassinations and usurpations.
- I knew that the pre-Roman Britons left no written history. That what we know about them comes from Roman accounts and archaeological finds. (Some of which are pretty spectacular.) I didn't realize that what we know about the experience of the Romans themselves in Britain is also based on relatively limited evidence. For instance, the primary source for Julius Caesar's not particularly successful invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 BCE are Caesar's own accounts, which are certainly contemporary but by no means unbiased.
There's a lot to learn out there.
* Usually this happens in response to a major historical anniversary, but unless I'm missing something this time it was just because.
**And yes, I am now thinking about hiking along Hadrian's Wall.
***Thank you, Antonia Fraser
****Which does, in fact, mean posthumous. The name was given to a man born after his father's death. Who knew?
Death in Florence
My first encounter with Girolamo Savonarola's attempt to scourge Florence of religious corruption was George Eliot's historical novel Romola, which I read in tiny bites as a distraction from historical history during my first year of graduate school. It was lush, dramatic, and exactly what I needed as I struggled with semiotics, deconstructionism, post-colonial theory, and the Bengali alphabet. I didn't feel any inclination to read more about Savonarola until Paul Strathern's Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City turned up in my books to review for Shelf Awareness for Readers. It was lush, dramatic, and filled in some major holes in my understanding of Renaissance Florence.
In the late 15th century, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola led a frenzied and occasionally violent campaign to return the city of Florence--and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole--to the principles of early Christianity. For three years, the self-proclaimed prophet ruled as the city's moral dictator. His career reached its highpoint in 1497 with the Bonfire of the Vanities: the public burning of playing cards, masks, mirrors, "indecent" books and pictures, and other items the puritanical monk deemed morally questionable.
Savonarola's brief reign is often treated as an interlude of religious fanaticism within the enlightened secularism of the Renaissance.* In Death in Florence, Strathern (author of several books dealing with Rennaisance Italy, including The Artist, The Philosopher and the Warrior) paints a more complicated picture, placing Savonarola within a broader context. He considers Medici political aspirations and financial machinations, papal corruption, the shifting political allegiances of Renaissance Italy, medieval scholasticism, Renaissance humanism and the physiology of prophetic visions.
Perhaps most interesting is Strathern's depiction of the relationship between Savonarola and Lorenzo de Medici, a complex tangle of admiration on the part of the prince for the monk's scholarship and piety, patronage relationships, power struggles for control of the Dominican order and secret death bed negotiations. Death in Florence is ultimately an account of two competing visions of Florentine glory--one political and one religious, both of which would help shape Europe in the coming century.
Almost enough to make me re-read Romola.
*Okay, so I know a little more than I let on. What can I say, stuff crosses my path.
And we have a winner!
As usual, a book drawing here on the Margins brought out interesting answers, including memories of earlier trips to Iceland and an introduction to the breathtaking photography of Jamie Young, which makes my efforts look like a toddler's scribbles.* As usual, I'm glad we pick a winner in a totally random way.
And our totally random winner is--Karen Holden.
Thanks for playing, thanks for reading. More historical adventures are on the way.
*Not that I even claimed any skill at photography.