Rome: A History in Seven Sackings

I've never read a work like this before, which starts with the obvious history of an era, then takes into account the temperature of the civilization as it was at the point of invasion, and how it affected it and repointed it toward its next historic period. There is nothing dull in Roman history, although you wouldn't know it from some of the histories out there, and this book avoids all the traps while telling the tale of a city and its ability to mirror the entire European world around it. I found all of it fascinating, but the story of Rome during World War II was particularly eye-opening and provided an insight I'd never found in half a century of reading history. The city comes alive, over and over. The writing is strong, as strong as the story it tells. Kudos. More like this, please.

If you're looking for information on the Vandal sack of 455, amazingly it's not here. The narrative skips from Alaric's sack of 410 right to the Gothic sack of 546! How the Vandal one didn't make the cut, I have no idea. The Vandal sack did far more damage to Rome than Alaric's 45 years earlier. Taking away one star for that--I mean, jeez, it's why I bought the book in the first place, looking for research on the Vandal invasion. Other than that, well researched and written. Just sad that the one I was sure would be there, wasn't.

I read this book on my flight to Italy, hoping to quickly re-aquaint myself with Roman history that I learned in college. The book helped me appreciate everything I saw during my time in Rome, particularly during when i visited Castel Sant’Angelo, as described in the fourth sacking chapter. Amazing that Rome has withstood so many calamities. I found that the book far more informative than run of the mill tourist books. Glad I read it.

Matthew Kneale has taken an interesting approach to explaining the history of Rome. Rather than getting bogged down in Roman imperial glory, he looks at the city from the aspect of its great failures. That is, he looks at how Rome has been sacked seven times in the past two and half millennia and the consequences of these sackings. However, for all its cleverness, “Rome: A History in Seven Sackings” doesn’t quite gel. I can’t put my finger on the issue but I found the book harder work than I would have imagined. The earlier chapters, in particular, were slow. The later chapters, especially the last one concerning the Nazis, carry more zing. I was fascinated to learn just how much fascist Roman architecture remains; unlike Germany where any hint of its Nazi past has been scrupulously erased. Overall, this book provides a good introduction to the broader sweep of Roman history. It’s a history of ongoing change and the influence of foreign invading forces. The narrative, however, is just a bit slow.

I picked up this book because I wanted to know more about the sackings of Rome and this book does precisely that. Despite its subject, t’s not dense, academic, or dry at all as most books covering this period tend to be. It is rather rich, compact, and succinct. The author sets up the chapters by briefly describing the background of a particular period. Kneale describes the key players and why the circumstances led to the sack then follows by describing the city during the time period before finishing the chapter off with the details of the actual sacking. It’s written well, researched well, and short enough that you’re not bogged down with irrelevant details and facts. Definitely recommend it. No complaints

Matthew Kneale’s book is not a comprehensive biography of Rome analogous to Edwin G. Burrows’ and Mike Wallace’s Gotham. It is a series of portraits and stories, built around seven instances in which invaders overran the city. Kneale describes the state of the city and tells the stories, generally pretty exciting, of the wars that led to the various invasions. The biggest limitation on the book is probably the somewhat arbitrary premise, that is, Kneale's decision to write about Rome at the time of the sackings. Rome went 800 years without an invasion during the height of the Roman Republic and Empire. So, Kneale says almost nothing about Rome during its classic glory days. He jumps from 400 BC to 400 AD. Rome was easy to invade during the decline of the Roman Empire and the middle ages, so Kneale’s history covers medieval Rome in depth. Rome has only been invaded twice since the Renaissance, but the sources are a lot richer in the modern period, so Kneale covers modern Rome pretty thoroughly too. A second limitation is that there is very little original about the book. Kneale popularizes what others have written. But these drawbacks aren’t fatal. As a history of medieval and modern Rome, Kneale’s book is fun and easy to read. He’s a fluid writer and has a good eye for detail. I enjoyed the book and learned a lot about Rome during its less famous, but no less interesting, post-classical ages.

The approach of using in-depth descriptions of overall political and military circumstances combined with detailed descriptions of Rome during seven different sackings make for great perspective and compelling reading.

Great book for those interested in Rome and its history. Studied Latin in high school as well as visiting Rome a few times and so I found it very absorbing.

Author Matthew Kneale serves as a truly enthusiastic guide through the history of his adopted home city, Rome. With three thousand years to take you through, he faces an important problem: he needs to “choose his battles;” he truly stands no hope of both telling the whole history and keeping your interest. So he chooses to take you on a history of sieges (though “sackings” does sound more dramatic!) Rome’s been besieged many more than seven times, but that’s OK, the idea is not to tell you about sieges and sackings, it’s to impart some of Rome’s history on you, and hopefully some of the author’s love and admiration. To tell you about how people lived, how they were governed, what they wore, what and how Romans ate, what they drank, how often they bathed, where they lived, where their masters lived and how their society was structured. And then, of course, how the siege went, that’s in there too! The book would be incomplete without the careful reconstruction of the historical events and without portraits of the historical figures who turned Rome into a battlefield, which are all present and correct; the book is worth reading for the many intrigues alone. With one exception, his first six sieges are spaced out by 500 years from one another, to give the city time to grow (or shrink!) and evolve. This is not about the sieges, it’s about Rome, bottom line! So you start with Gaul Brennus, who ravaged Rome in 387BC after defeating its army at the battle of Alia, you move on to Visigoth Alaric, whose success on his third attempt in 410AD probably caused his death to malaria which he probably got in Rome the same year, and from him to the unsuccessful Ostrogoth Witigis who was thwarted by Belisarius in 538, only for his successor Totila to capture the eternal city two years later. Next comes (German) Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV’s three-year effort, that was crowned with success in year 1084, leading to his own coronation by his appointee Pope Clement III, followed by Norman Robert Guiscard’s re-taking of the city to re-establish Pope Gregory VII, one of several who excommunicated Henry. (this was all extremely confusing!!!) Rome was at its filthiest, but also at its grandest (excluding classical times) when Matthew Kneale brings us back, to tell the story of the unfortunate Pope Clement VII (a lesser member of the Medici family), who was undone by Emperor Charles V of Spain and his Lutheran Landesknechte in 1527. This was a proper sacking, probably almost as bad as that by the Vandals in antiquity (which is not much documented and does not feature in the book). Also, this marks the last time in this book when Rome was actually an important city, geopolitically speaking. From there it’s to the 1848 defeat of Garibaldi and Mazzini at the hands of the French, who’d come to reinstate the Pope, which of course was the preamble to the creation of the Italian state some fourteen years later. The book closes with the nine month German occupation of 1943. The author makes a truly enormous effort to not only keep some type of narrative going, but also to revise the history you’ve just learnt and to recount the evolution of his city through time. You can’t really hop around randomly between sieges and sackings, this is a book to be read linearly. Regardless, and perhaps it’s my fault for knowing so little, I’ve got to say I lost him often. There’s quite simply a whole lot of history (and far far far too many names of buildings and monuments) packed in these pages. But I did gain a very good understanding about how the city changed through time, for the evolution of the papacy and its role in the history of Rome and I was introduced to a number of historical figures who stand a decent chance of staying in my memory. If you know Rome, I suspect this is an indispensable book. Importantly, I most genuinely enjoyed reading this. It accompanied me everywhere for about a week!

the content I found new and refreshing putting events into a historical context. The prose and writing tends to be a bit confusing with too many subjects and too few or linked predicates in the same sentence.

Interesante, bien escrito, ameno.

Roma é tudo, até parece irônico que a sede do catolicismo esteja no antigo lugar de feiticeiros e magos.

Only got to the third page. Not the books fault really it was not what I was expecting. More about me but that is the present day for you b