Pat Southern

Brilliantly researched - but rather dry, September 26, 2014

This review is from: Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen (Kindle Edition)
Difficult to review as it depends on your requirements: for the serious student of Ancient Rome, this is a *5 work, meticulously researched and with a large bibliography. However, I would take issue with the cover blurb that calls it a 'lively account' and an 'engaging read'. As a casual reader, I found it quite a struggle to keep my concentration show more focussed.
Very little is known about Zenobia, and the author has to work with Roman writings (some contradictory, some of dubious veracity) and archaeological finds. Thus much is necessarily supposition, and we can never 'know' Zenobia, or definitively what her motivations were, for taking over large parts of Roman territory in 270 AD.
Nonetheless I've learned a great deal - but was glad to come to the end! show less

Compared to previous centuries, there are few contemporary histories covering this period. Zosimus and the Historia Augusta are the most comprehensive, but both are unreliable. This is a shame as the period covers the Empire's decent into chaos and emergence under Diocletian and Constantine into a new order that continued through the Byzantine era.

Patricia Southern does an excellent job with meager resources in crafting a narrative of the period. As much as possible, she weighs the existing show more information without hiding her assumptions or forcing a story where there is none. It's a remarkable achievement, giving coherence to one of the most intriguing periods of antiquity. show less

I highly recommend this brief biography. Although the ancient sources are limited, and unquestionably skewed in favor of Augustus, this work sets forth the life and accomplishments of Marc Antony in an objective and thorough way. At the same time, there are no unnecessary digressions that take away from the main narrative. Everything strictly relates in some meaningful way to Antony.

A slight criticism could be that the narrative is so concise that a reader without any prior knowledge may show more sometimes have a bit difficulty following along. show less

This is an academic study and covered quite a lot of ground. Items common to all Roman soldiers, like recruitment, basic training, pay, retirements and other aspects are covered. Also covered in great detail are items pertaining to cavalry, such as deployment, weapons, organizations and again many other aspects. Additionally there is quite a lot about the types of horses, how they were fed, housed, trained, exercised and even how they were disposed of after death. There are quite a lot of show more conclusions which are based on sketchy sources or on comparative data gathered from more modern cavalry practices and the authors are very upfront with identifying what is provable, what is conjecture and what is purely speculatively. Highly recommended. show less