I have almost never read science fiction, so naturally I had not taken an interest in one of its most prolific authors. But there it is, I don’t know why, while looking at the list of his works, my attention was drawn instead to his history of the Roman Republic.
Reading this book is a pleasant experience. It is not indigestible. The worry is that halfway through reading, I looked at the table of contents, and the first chapters already evoked nothing to me. The problem with this type of chronological historical work is that it is just an enumeration of facts with dates and proper names; I already feel like I have forgotten everything and therefore that the reading was useless.
Only the story of the adventures of great men will persist a little in my memory, notably that of Hannibal Barca who crossed the Alps with elephants—you couldn’t make that up. And Julius Caesar, who became a general at 44 just because it was mandatory, when one had political ambitions, to conquer a new region for Rome; for him, it was Gaul. The first volume ends with the crowning of Octavian who becomes Augustus (literally the month of August), the first emperor. There was a “end of The Godfather Part II” vibe at the end of the book. It makes you want to read volume 2 on the Empire.