I haven't read this part II yet, although I very much enjoyed part I - it's an after-work read for sure - I wanted to mention for anyone interested in Roman history, spotify has "The History of Rome" podcast that has been going for something like 15 years now, and is super excellent. It's become my favorite thing to listen to while I cook or clean.
It looks like this covers Diocletian's monetary reforms, which is one of my absolute favorite parts of roman history - looking forward to it!
> "The History of Rome" podcast that has been going for something like 15 years now, and is super excellent
If you're talking about Mike Duncan's podcast, note that it ended in 2012 with the deposing of the final Western Emperor.
There is a spiritual successor by Robin Pierson called "The History of Byzantium" that picks up shortly after the end and is still ongoing after over 230 episodes.
Duncan's current podcast is "Revolutions", which covers a variety of historical revolutions. I've been listening for a bit now and am only on the third (French) of ten revolutions. Definitely recommend the show for people seeking a history podcast.
The History of Rome was the very first podcast I can remember listening to on a weekly basis. It was the era when the Nokia N95 was very much the flagship almost smartphone, and I got so interested in the idea of being able to automatically subscribe to these on-demand and niche "radio shows" that I suffered the torture of writing an app for the Symbian OS.
Did you catch this article from the other day? I don't know much about Diocletian's monetary reforms (I'm still busy reading up on the history of the Republic), but his Edict of Maximum Prices was mentioned in it. https://www.bookandsword.com/2021/05/08/how-much-did-a-tunic...
I found it tiring that she consistently dismisses the ancient sources as wrong without giving an reason why. Academics have been saying "well this <commonly believed thing from antiquity> can't possibly be true", and it not infrequently turns out to be at least not wrong. Sure, sources in antiquity are unreliable, but they are at least two millennia closer to the actual events than we are.
The book also seemed like a survey that had chunks missing out of the map. The parts that were there were well done (excepting not giving any good reason for distrusting the ancient sources) and I definitely learned things. But I don't feel like I got a good feeling of the course of Roman history, more like little vignettes along the way.
I can't say I dislike the book, but I think it could be better. (Although, I'm a complete novice in Roman history, so that might influence my opinion. And maybe the book wasn't written for me, too.)
I read it a few years ago after listening to the Duncan podcast and reading a bunch of archeology papers. I'm definitely no classicist, and don't read Latin but have a passing interest in the history. I think some of here dismissals are well founded and other experts agree. I think the weakness of the book is that it leans heavily on pronouncement of unknowability. But I really like that she treats the reader like a smart person and presents conflicting and complicated information as is, and lets you mull it over.
It isn't a perfect book, but it's very readable, informative, and seems to be well regarded. I was on a Rome kick at the time and didn't find anything that seemed to be completely out of left field.
Perhaps it's a reaction to the normal bias? I'm constantly surprised by how people will take extremely partial accounts from somebody on one side of an issue and no real expressed or implicit commitment to accuracy at face value.
[0]: e.g. Thucydides' History of the Pelopenesian war might be accurate, but honestly, why would it be? It's even worse when you have stuff like Caesar's writings.
I’ve skimmed some of it. I was under the impression that Gibbon’s decline narrative isn’t very well regarded among scholars today, but I don’t know enough to make any judgment there.
> While I am going at points to gesture to Gibbon’s thinking, we’re not going to debate him; he is the ‘old man’ of our title. Gibbon himself largely exists only in historiographical footnotes and intellectual histories; he is not at this point seriously defended nor seriously attacked but discussed as the venerable, but now out of date, origin point for all of this bickering.
Holding it in ill-regard would be punching down. It's an 18th work! If it were at all up to date, that would indicate serious stagnation in the academy. Of course, there has been a great amassing of new evidence since then, especially non-textual.
I'm starting book 3 right now. Due to being written over 200 years ago his work might be out of date, but is there anything he got wrong? I could see scholars having issues with some of his opinions, but as far as I am aware, his factual history stands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominate == USSR, basically. It's too editorialized to stand as a modern historical text, but it's great fun to read nonetheless!
It looks like this covers Diocletian's monetary reforms, which is one of my absolute favorite parts of roman history - looking forward to it!