Rome by Robert Hughes

This book isn't so much of a history of Rome as more of an artist history of Rome, yet I found the investment in this work absolutely worth it, as it is written with visceral enthusiasm that savaged mediocrity and rhapsodically defended excellence.

Rome is fascinating with its long history of ambition, parricide, fratricide, betrayal and obsessive ambition. No more ambitious city than Rome had ever existed. No city has ever been more steeped in ferocity from its beginnings than Rome. I have never been to Rome, but am already fascinated by the idea of it, albeit a poorly formed, misshapen idea; still, it ignited my passion of learning more about this mysterious city.

So several years ago, I attempted to dive into the comprehensive history of Rome, yet most work were filled with overwhelmingly dense and dry information, and with gaps between Roman and the rest of European history that I ultimately closed the books and sighed in defeat.

However, Hughes succeeded magnificently in cramming in 2500 years of history from the early Etruscans and aqueducts to the Caesars to shift from Paganism to Christianity to the Papal States to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, to Baroque and Classicism to Modernity and Mussolini into this book. Certainly, there are criticisms on the inaccuracy of certain information, yet when wide-ranging details are stuffed into 400 pages, a thing or two are bound to be lost in the flux. A history that lasts almost 3,000 years and is pivotal to so much of western civilization  really requires a chronicler of well-nigh unattainable erudition like Hughes, who can write with the skill needed to prevent readers from succumbing to a literary version of Stendhal syndrome, and Hughes fulfilled this job successfully.

In pages off trenchant prose, Hughes chronicled the art and architecture in excruciating details, from the mythical twins, Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf down through relatively modern times. Hughes’s work is highly opinionated, especially towards arts. Some of the pages included razor-sharp portraits such as Seneca is illustrated as a hypocrite almost without equal in the ancient world, and Caravaggio is described as a saturnine genius who thrashed about in the etiquette of early Seicento Rome like a shark in a net. As an art critic, Hughes truly shined when we reached the parts on Renaissance, Bernini and the 18th century, his interest waned in discussing Modernity and its art.

If you would like to learn the history of Rome from an entertaining and erudite guide, this book is the impeccable choice.