A Walk in Ancient Rome: A Vivid Journey Back in Time

I almost didn't buy this book after reading some of the overly harsh reviews. This is an incredible undertaking by John Cullen. I have often wanted a guided tour of Imperial Rome and wondered what time-travel would be like. Well, this is as near to traveling back to 150AD as we are likly to ever experience. You land at the Port of Ostia and jostle with the merchants, carriage drivers, and foreigners as they wend their way towards the Eternal City. You pass children begging, small shrines, and various taverns. Once you enter the city you take a circular route of the various districts, monuments, and historical sights in this city of one million people. This is an easy read for those who have been to Rome and an essential read for those who have yet to travel there. Cullen explores everything... Prostitution, executions, public games, pickpockets, the aquaduct system, the insulae of suberbia and much much more. I agree that more frequent use of maps would have been helpful but all in all a rousing great exploration of Rome at the height of its ancient glory. Three thumbs up!

This is perhaps one of, if not the best, books to describe life in this ancient yet majestic city. The way that Cullen brings the life of people long ago into our lives today by showing the similarities and differences is amazing. It even provides such vivid descriptions that you will think you are really there or about to be.

I read others' reviews before I decided on this book, and they were accurate. It is a fascinating way to learn history and get a mental image of Imperial Rome during its heyday. It gives you a look at each section of the city from the architecture to politics to religion - and a taste of what life was like for the people - from the slaves, criminals and very poor, on up to the wealthiest families. I'll be traveling to Rome this summer, visiting the remains of sites still standing. Reading this book has already greatly enriched my experience.

Hats off to John T. Cullen. The man came up with the brilliant idea of thoroughly researching the geography, culture, daily life, rules, laws, customs, sights, smells, sounds, textures, even, of ancient Rome, circa 150 AD, and then broke it down into session-sized chapters that let us take a highly well-imagined walking tour of the eternal city as it was in that time and place. It's true, as another reviewer pointed out, maps might have made a nice accompaniment to this book, but that's a minor aside. I loved this book! I loved the way Cullen takes his readers by the hand and directs them through a five-senses trip into the past. Not only does he describe the architecture and the major tourist sites (and occasionally take us into the future to tell what happened to the places and what is on the sites today) he invents incidents and people from the era to "flesh out" what life there was truly like. From a minor purse snatching, to gladiators in training, from lugubrious slaves about to be shipped off to the provinces, to aristocrats about official business, it is the people as well as the places that make this re-construction of the past so much fun...and so shocking! Ancient Rome was brutal by our modern standards. Death was everyplace, starvation was reality, poverty atrociously cruel, and famine, plague and war could be as close as the next season. Let's hope this is the first in a series and we will soon be visiting, say, Shakespeare's London, Ivan the Terrible's Moscow, Peking as it was during Marco Polo's (supposed) visit, or Philadelphia when Benjamin Franklin called that booming city home. This book is sheer pleasure....and it informs, too!

Not only does this book create an accurate sensory impression to delight the specialist - for the lay person, who is not a specialist in archeology and history, this book is an excellent introduction to ancient Roman history. Although the book focuses specifically on the year 150 A.D., when the empire was at its zenith, Cullen offers a considerable breadth of information on Mediterranean history as a setting. He succeeds in describing not only the minute sights and sounds and smells of the city, but how this world capital was part of a vast swath of people and events pouring out of the Bronze Age and even earlier. This walk in ancient Rome is also a carefully designed lesson plan stepping through great tracts of history - an education in itself.