How Did Rome Rise And Fall?, by Anita Croy

Given this book’s small size, and the massive nature of the questions that the book’s title asks, it is inevitable that this book’s treatment of its historical mystery is going to be immensely superficial. It would therefore be uncharitable to expect historical depth from a book that is less than 50 pages in length. Admittedly, I am not the intended reader of this book, but given that this book is aimed at the juvenile audience and is precisely the sort of book that would likely to be read by a student looking for an easily accessible book on a matter that could easily come up in a European History or Ancient History course (or something relating to the classics in general), I am by no means unfit to review a book like this and can give a good idea of how this book is likely to be viewed by not only its reading audience, but also by those who may have to grade tests and essays that use this book as a historical resource, and that is a considerably more interesting perspective to review the book than may first be assumed from this book’s title.

The book’s contents hint at some of the ambition of the book. The book is organized via several questions. The first one is “Who build the city?” which considers the city to have been a Latin and Sabine city that was soon taken over by Etruscans and points to carbon-dating to argue that Rome was built two centuries before its traditional founding in 753BC. This is followed by the question: “What made Rome eternal?” which considers Rome’s impressive public architecture and engineering. After this, the author answers the question of “Where did the Romans live?” with a look at the Roman military, Roman roads, as well as border posts like Hadrian’s wall and the limes in Germany. After that, the author asks “How did the Romans live?” and answers the question with an examination of Roman baths, eating habits, art, and language. Finally, the author asks “Why did Rome fall?” and attempts to capture the nuance of threats from the Germanic peoples, weak leadership, the split of the empire, and economic weakness. After this the book ends with a glossary, further resources, and an index.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this book, breathtaking even, is the fact that just about every time the book makes a firm claim it gets the claim wrong. The author gives contradictory claims to the building of Rome between the Etruscans and the Latins and Sabines. The author says that soon after 509BC Rome became the most important state in Italy, glossing over centuries of struggles with the Etruscans, Celts, and Greeks. The author claims that Julius Caesar was the first dictator of Rome when he was basically the last before the Empire. Elsewhere the author claims that the Pantheon in Rome was unique for having all the gods in the world in one place, which is wrong in both aspects of its claim. Later the author claims that the defeat at the Teutoburg Forest was Rome’s first major defeat, which is laughably wrong (Hannibal and the Parthians, to say nothing of the Gauls, would strongly disagree). One interesting omission is that the book in examining the reasons for Rome’s fall there is no discussion of the religious turmoil relating to the persecution of Christians and Jews and then adoption of a form of Christianity, which is something that was noted at the time and since then as a major reason for Rome’s fall and a lack of social cohesion and military strength towards the end of empire. For a book to get so much wrong in so few pages is remarkable. Besides this dubious worth, the book is not without value mainly because of its excellent photographs.