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Loading... A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from…by J. C. McKeown
None.  RandyStafford | Mar 10, 2012 |  A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities is a perfectly descriptive title for this collection of miscellany -- more than a thousand facts, anecdotes and quotes from the Roman era, accompanied by black-and-white photos of coinage, artwork and architecture. And its back-cover blurbs -- by Ovid, Cicero and Horace, among others -- are a comedic mock-up that perfectly sets the book’s light tone. The volume is best suited to browsing -- open a drawer (a chapter) or two at a sitting and skim snippets about Roman life from the personal (gender, family, sex, food, toilets) to the societal (names, laws, professions, architecture, military, rulers). As a reference source, it’s decidedly casual -- McKeown acknowledges his motivation is interest not academics, and passages are attributed but not sourced. The lack of an index hampers accessibility and keeps information buried in one chapter even when it's relevant to others. A brief glossary does define important people and events, but this isn’t a get-acquainted book for Roman-naïve readers. Instead, it will be interesting to anyone familiar with the basics of Roman history, and fun for aficionados. (Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.) (  )1  DetailMuse | Jul 13, 2010 | 'A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities' is a collection of miscellanea about the Roman Empire that is sorted into chapters by subject matter, covering everything from family life to kings and emperors. No snippet takes more than a minute to read so it is an easy book to pick up and read anywhere, be it on a bus, in a doctor's waiting room or even in the bathroom. I was reluctant to mention the last one but, since an entire chapter is dedicated to toilets, I figured it was apropos. Most are quotes from familiar faces such as Seneca, Cicero, Plutarch or Pliny the Elder but others are gleaned from assorted sources dug up by anthropologists over the centuries. As with any collection of information or quotations, some parts will be fascinating and others will be rather droll. Still others just leave you scratching your head in wonder. One entry reminded me of the the old 'I, state-your-name' gag from Animal House when a grave was found with the inscription "Here lies the body of a child whose name is to be added". All in all this is an enjoyable read. No classically decorated bathroom should be without a copy. (  ) Unkletom | Jul 6, 2010 | no reviews | add a review
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Wikipedia in English (2)
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From the clever octopus that stole garum out of a warehouse to graffiti in Pompeian brothels to the paucity of praenomina in the latter republic to the sadisms and mere eccentricities of emperors, this is an always lively and amusing book. Each curiosity is never more than a page long, often a single paragraph. McKeown has constructed the whole thing so that you can dip in anywhere though, occasionally, there is a reference to something you would have come across if you would have read the book the traditional cover-to-cover way. Most of the bits are taken from classical works, but he sometimes goes off on modern tangents like comparing the multi-tasking of Caesar to President James Garfield, noting the inaccuracies of Fascist Italian cinema in recreating the Punic Wars, and the horror of French novelist Stendahl at British tourists. And, channeling Pliny the Elder, he notes that he's left it up to his classical sources to verify the truth of their tales.
The specific topics McKeown covers are Roman family life, women, names, education, military, naval matters, the law, farming, medicine, religion, philosophy, attitudes toward foreigners, slaves, animal tales, spectacles, decadence, food and drink, architecture, sex, timekeeping, and rulers. Throw in a helpful glossary about famous sources, people, concepts, and places and several illustrations - especially of coins, and this is a keeper for anyone interested in Roman history no matter where they are in their studies. (