Sparta Calling

On the Spartacus Road
by Peter Stothard

REVIEW HERE

This looks like an interesting book, both in it's style (" This is one of those rare books in which there is something of unexpected interest on every page, and which makes the reader wish he or she could pack a small bag and accompany the author on his travels.") and it's connecting of the Roman Empire to present-day you-know-where, which is an easy one to make when witnessing what some might say is an over-reach of empirical power, and one that is doomed to repeat the past failures of such over-reach:

More important still, the gladiators were slaves. As Stothard points out, slavery was the Roman equivalent of mechanical energy and power in our culture. Our civilization is built on gas, oil, coal, and the power they generate; that of Rome was built on the power of the human body, kept at work by brutal discipline and constraint. Just as we go to war to secure oil, the Romans went to war to secure slaves in vast numbers for the task of building Rome and expanding its power over the known world....In short, the country that Stothard explores, both physically and in his mind, resembles to an alarming degree our own, and reminds us once again that all rising imperial powers share one thing in common—their eventual decline and fall as taxes at home fail to pay for expensive wars on foreign soil, and as greed, corruption, foreign trade, and the accumulation of vast riches by the few begin to sap the energy and enterprise of the majority of citizens.

The frustrating thing is, as Korda points out, the fact that we "defiantly" (perfect choice of words there, in my homo opinion) refuse to learn:

While politicians may be forgiven for failing to predict the future—who can, alas?—it is amazing that they defiantly ignore the past.

That they ignore the recent past is even more baffling than them ignoring 2000+ years ago. But, as Cicero would say, "whatevs."

I can't say I would've even noticed this book were it not for my falling in love with my new favorite drama, Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Watch it on Starz!!!!!

Of course, who’s gonna be reading this dumb shit now that Meghan McCain’s book Look at My Big, Fat, Dumb Republican Titties! book is about to be released?