I had high hopes of this book; the topic was interesting, and the title well-chosen, and I enjoyed the introduction which was written in an informal and accessible way. This would be useful for a school library I was thinking, and I was amused by the occasionally colourful language in the early chapters. The premise of the book was engaging, and Emma Southon was good at bringing ancient events to life with modern references, but as I read on, I was increasingly concerned by sweeping statements and historical inaccuracies in a book which purported to be explaining an aspect of ancient history. The book is divided sensibly into different occasions for murder: that between senators, murder in law, in the family, in marriage, murder by slaves, magic and famous murders which took place in and of the imperial families as well as murder used as judicial punishment; and to be fair there are plenty of examples, backed up by primary sources for all of these. However, the inaccuracies spoilt it for me. In chapter 1, Murder on the Senate Floor, we are informed that Cicero ‘had Catiline executed without trial’. There were undoubtedly executions without trial as a result of the Catilinarian conspiracy; Cicero's exile was as a result of them, but none of them was Catiline; he died fighting at the battle of Pistoria, and later in the chapter on magic Southon states, regarding Cato, that he ‘got his way in 146 BCE [with the destruction of Carthage]’. There is no mention that he died in 149 BCE without ever knowing of the destruction of Carthage; then again that Tiberius (Murder in the Imperial House) sent ‘guards to execute his ex-wife [Julia] … on the day he became Princeps’. Tacitus tells us that Tiberius let her waste away reckoning that no one would notice as she was out of the public eye. Such inaccuracies spoil a book. Southon has gathered a large number of anecdotes on murder together and they are very entertaining but as I continued reading, I became less amused by the demotic language used. This is not because I was shocked, but because it rather lost its impact. As there is plenty of shock value in the subject matter, the writing style does not need to be constantly ‘shocking’ too. I also found that there were a number of errors that could have been picked up in the proof-reading stage – Rome was founded in 753 BCE not 743 BCE and Piso's wife, implicated in the death of Germanicus, was Plancina, not Placina. These might seem like minor irritants but taken together with the inaccuracies I found myself rushing to my bookcase every time a date or an event was discussed. This is a shame as I had really been looking forward to this slightly different take on Roman history. For this reason, I would not suggest this as a potential acquisition for a school library, although I would not say it is not worth having as long as you are prepared to fact-check.
Open access
