No other society has built media empires on such mountains of dead and mutilated women. But, to us, the Romans look like the weird ones because they were fascinated by murder in a different way. We have our mountains of dead fictional girls. But they had mountains of dead real men. [loc. 85]
Murder in Ancient Rome came in many forms, and Southon explores them all: the 'social death' of enslaved persons, which meant that their actual deaths were trivial; the infamous murders of assorted emperors (I did not know that Claudius was the only Emperor to have been poisoned); death as spectacle in the arena; ritual murder and sacrifice; the high rate of infant mortality, and whether all those dead babies were killed deliberately or not.
The book also examines the ways in which the empire became increasingly corrupt, the emperors kings in all but name, and the vast inequalities at the heart of Rome: rich men at the top, women (even wealthy aristocrats) almost invisible and almost powerless, a 'middle class' of commoners, and an underclass of enslaved people who were, well, barely people. I was appalled by the existence of professional firms who 'offered bespoke punishment of enslaved people and execution services for the busy enslaver who didn’t have the time to do his own killings'. ("Probably the best insight you’ll ever get into the mundane reality of a slave state like Rome and how little the lives of individuals meant to it," notes Southon.) There are also accounts of especially barbaric murders by aristocrats of their slaves. Between these and the public enjoyment of staged violence in gladiatorial contests, and the thousand-year existence of a state founded on the dehumanising of the enslaved, it's easy to conclude that the Romans did not feel empathy: and it's also unsettling to realise that all those historical novels about free persons forming strong friendships with their slaves are, at best, portraying an exceptional occurrence.
The Romans had 'a unique and deep-seated cultural horror of murder within the family', or rather the familia: 'one’s whole immediate and extended family, plus people who have been enslaved, plus formerly enslaved people who have been freed who now have a limited kind of freedom but are still around and share the family name, plus any random men who might have been adopted in...' The murders that 'mattered' were those of wealthy, important men: but Southon also describes the few surviving accounts of murdered women. ('These women are only visible to us because their male relatives had enough social status and money to cause an imperial level fuss.') Wives murdered by husbands for getting in the way of the husband's wickedness; wives and daughters murdered to make a political point, or to punish the family or familia of a man who'd fallen from favour.
Southon's colloquial voice and willingness to poke fun at the mores of Roman society may not suit everybody, but it does make A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum extremely readable. But what she is writing about is violent and appalling, and though she is both furious and intellectually critical about Roman society, and its foundation of death and suffering, there are moments when the humour feels a little off-key.
Fulfils the ‘Recommendation’ rubric (thanks, Kate!) of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.
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