Crassus: The First Tycoon (Ancient Lives)

Product Information

Some said that his open mouth, shriveled by desert air, had been filled with molten gold as testament to his lifetime of greed. Flashbacks paint a good picture about his early career, the internal politics in Rome and his rivalry with Pompey. This book aside from Allen Wards earlier work is the only one in English and while it is fairly good it is not nearly as thorough in its examination but it also assumes prior knowledge of the reader. Stothard is British and some of his idioms and sentence structures can be a bit challenging for the American audience.

It has all the necessary elements: the harmatia of the protagonist - that fatal flaw in someone otherwise favoured by fortune; the hubris and nemesis; that peripeteia when realization dawns that retreat and defeat are the only option; and heaps of dramatic irony as the audience watches how each chapter or 'scene', each stage in Crassus's life leads to this one conclusion. For a book titled “The First Tycoon” I know little of his financial innovations, and one would be already familiar with the stories told in this book if they had prior knowledge of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero.

For the many fans of this period of Roman history, Stothard offers a fascinating story, both well told and well worth the telling. There is an enormous amount of information condensed in the few pages and it is certainly not for beginners, but a good way for amateur enthusiasts to refresh their memory and knowledge of this fascinating period in Roman history, covering roughly the period from the end of the Sulla-Marius rivalry to the beginnings of Caesar's reign and the beginning of the end for the Republic.

Crassus is the least known of the Triumvirate of the Late Republic so this book likely fills th gap between all that is written about Pompey and Caesar. Without his catastrophic ambition, this trailblazing tycoon might have quietly entered history as Rome’s first modern political financier. Inspection copies are books under consideration as required or recommended reading for an upcoming course.

It is a well-known story and therefore a difficult challenge to breathe new life into this long-dead man. His head with his mouth stuffed with molten gold was used as a stage prop in a play after being presented to the Parthian king Orodes. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Stothard’s elegant and penetrating biography could not be more apposite in this age of political turmoil. Since the Romans were certain that their country was the greatest country of its time, the underground wealth had surely to be somewhere.

It joins the dots between his father dying in the Marius/Sulla conflict, his role in the battles with Spartacus, the triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey and finally his demise in his quest for glory to try to match the prestige and martial exploits of his co triumvirates. First, the Crassus whom most of us know best as the crucifier of Spartacus’s slave army, would probably have owned the lithium fields himself. Rome’s richest man, memorably played by Laurence Olivier in the film of Spartacus, owned most of the city and its surroundings in the first half of the first century BCE. Romans saw the value of precious metals but also the danger of mining them—for pollution of mind and the land.Stothard’s biographical history is erudite yet written in an easy-to-read style honed by years as an editor, journalist, and critic. Had he taken the advice of one of his officers and a future assassin of Caesar Cassius he might have salvaged something. Crassus, by contrast, owned shares in Spanish mines and lent the proceeds to politicians whom he kept as clients, playing one against the other in the hope that none would ever exceed his own influence on events.

One of the strengths of Stothard's writing is that he shows rather than tells: anecdote is preferred to adjectives. Scriitorul englez, jurnalist și critic, se pare că a scris această operă la "comanda" Universității Yale ca parte dintr-o serie mai largă în care sunt descrise scurt, clar și la obiect, viețile antice ale unor personalități alese mai mult sau mai puțin aleatoriu (Cleopatra, Ramses, Demetrius, Julian Apostatul). This short biography is nice and concise, but it can only be so short because it assumes good prior knowledge. In this short volume of 158 pages, Stothard gives just about enough background for those unversed in Roman history to follow the tale. He purchased the election of priests, even investing spectacular sums to make Caesar chief priest, the pontifex maximus, as a counterweight to the power of Pompey.

We publish history, politics, current affairs, art, architecture, biography and pretty much everything else. Perennials PERENNIALS constant friends A selection of novels, memoirs and more by some of our favourite authors. Peter Stothard's 'Crassus' is a new biography written for Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series, which aims to prove that the lives of ancient thinkers, rulers, warriors, and politicians are still relevant today. The purpose of the silver, the gold (and the lithium if they had recognised it) was to test the national character to leave it alone. In Stothard’s fine prose we see not only the whole picture of Crassus’s life but also how consequential a figure he truly was.