I suppose you could say that ancient Rome is having “a moment.” Gladiator II was a commercial success, outpacing the first Gladiator and grossing $450 million worldwide. Elon Musk, the primus inter pares among Donald Trump’s tech Praetorians, has spoken of scattering his seed as an attempt to produce a “legion-level” number of offspring. The Oval Office itself has been redecorated in a way that calls to mind a Roman imperial palace, with gilded ornaments and golden filigree on every surface. The coffee table holds a model of the new Air Force One, the president’s version of a lectica—the litter on which Rome’s wealthy and powerful were borne by slaves. The current atmosphere of menace and authoritarianism in the imperial capital is certainly worthy of that earlier time.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that a book called The Neverending Empire, by Aldo Cazzullo, is having a moment, too. Cazzullo is a prominent Italian journalist and the author of 30 books. This new one was a big hit in Italy—selling upwards of 250,000 copies—and is now being published in English. The subtitle of the book captures the subject matter and the argument: “the infinite impact of ancient Rome.” As Cazzullo writes, “The Roman Empire never really fell, nor will it fall. It has continued to live on in the minds, words, and symbols of the empires that came after it.”
The point is hard to argue with. The book itself, though, is a strange artifact. Tossing legends, chronicles, and other bits and pieces into a blender, Cazzullo sets out to tell the story of Rome from its founding in the eighth century B.C. all the way to its final decline—and then pursues the empire into its afterlife in art, literature, and politics. His breezy tone is that of a guide with a microphone at the front of a tour bus, on a route that covers a thousand years with 50 stops in four hours. Cazzullo is always ready with a helpful prompt when he feels the material may be getting too complex for his audience.
On Roman military prowess: “In war, the legionaries of Augustus and his successors were just like Rafael Nadal in a tennis match; not always able to crush the opponent, but very hard to beat.”
On Julius Caesar: “Among his mistresses is Mucia, Pompey’s wife, whom he hastens to repudiate by letter (like Daniel Day-Lewis, who breaks up with the beautiful Isabelle Adjani by fax).”
On Roman misconceptions about Britain: “The nights were said to last three months and the ground was covered with perennial ice, like the planet on which the spaceship lands in Interstellar.”
On the last resting place of Cicero: “Until recently, to reach the tomb one had to wade like Indiana Jones through lush vegetation.”
On Mark Antony and his Egyptian paramour: “He caught sight of Cleopatra on a ship; not at the bow, like Kate Winslet in Titanic, but at the stern.”
Caesar again: “Like Napoleon, he suffered from hair loss; and back then, you could not go to Turkey for a hair transplant.”
Edward Gibbon, who looked a lot like Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII, never gave his readers this kind of help.
Does it reflect some deep cultural difference—that a historical best-seller in Italy seems so at odds with what an American would expect from a work of popular history? For whatever reason, books on Rome generally aspire to a high standard, and there have been many superb recent ones. If trapped on Cazzullo’s thousand-year tour bus, I know what I’d want in my knapsack.
I’d want Mary Beard’s SPQR, a magisterial and for-the-ages survey history. I’d move on to Peter Stothard’s Horace, a biography of one of Rome’s slyest and most accessible poets—a man who fought on the losing side at the Battle of Philippi and somehow went on to thrive under the winning side. Then it would be Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age, by Tom Holland, the historian and podcaster—it’s a no-nonsense account of what it took, in diplomacy, blood, and treasure, to keep the empire whole. After that, another from Holland: his new translation of The Twelve Caesars, by Suetonius: indelible portraits of the early emperors by an author who combines the reportorial attributes of Bob Woodward, Kitty Kelley, and TMZ. I’d end with Judith Herrin’s Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe, about the Italian city to which power retreated as Rome declined.
It’s hard to know what the fate of The Neverending Empire will be in the U.S. and Britain. After 300 pages of scandal and slaughter, Cazzullo’s conclusion that the empire “wasn’t so bad after all” might suit the times perfectly, at least among a segment of the population. The red-and-gilt cover of The Neverending Empire would make a fitting accent touch on the Oval Office coffee table. They’d just have to move the airplane.
Cullen Murphy is an editor at large at The Atlantic and the author of several books, including God’s Jury and Cartoon County
