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Hadrian's Empire - When Rome Ruled the World

Tim Cribb

Hadrian's Empire - When Rome Ruled the World

by Danny Danziger and Nicholas Purcell

Hodder & Stoughton, HK$135

Rome was at its apogee when Hadrian built his famous walls. The one in England stretches for 80 Roman miles - a Roman mile we learn at the outset being about 1,620 yards in a later imperial measure, or 1,480 metres. Hadrian had already built another wall - this one in Germany and stretching for 80 miles (it's unclear if those are Roman miles, but it was pretty long), although it has largely vanished. Hadrian's Empire has a lot about construction and soldiering and slavery and government, but what emerges is a picture of life for the Roman citizens and their subjugated subjects about AD122. Nicholas Purcell gathers such historical evidence as can be had, including letters and writings of ordinary folk that survive on stone or bronze, and journalist Danny Danziger, who has done eight, mostly historical, collaborations to date, spins it all into what The Daily Telegraph called a 'racy and readable (or, depending on your point of view, facile and superficial)' account of Hadrian's Rome. It was all rather downhill after him. A satisfying draught of 'history lite'.

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