Martin Kopischke reviewed Augustus by Adrian Goldsworthy
A good take on a bad genre
3 stars
While reading this, I’ve quipped this is a good biography, as biographies go, while reminding me why I can’t stand biographies. I stand by that assessment, but would like to expand on it a bit.
The problem with writing a biography about someone dead for going on two millennia based on close to zero first hand information on that person is structural. There are source critical approaches that, shedding light on how we construct history, can make for an engrossing read without constructing narratives out of thin air; unluckily, none of these have been chosen here. Instead, we have an old style, capital “H” Humanities book: assuming that a smart interpretation of a finite set of materials thoroughly known to specialists, delivered in an authoritative voice, is good enough. For a long time, it actually might have been, but the current chaos embroiling the Humanities makes me suspect that time …
While reading this, I’ve quipped this is a good biography, as biographies go, while reminding me why I can’t stand biographies. I stand by that assessment, but would like to expand on it a bit.
The problem with writing a biography about someone dead for going on two millennia based on close to zero first hand information on that person is structural. There are source critical approaches that, shedding light on how we construct history, can make for an engrossing read without constructing narratives out of thin air; unluckily, none of these have been chosen here. Instead, we have an old style, capital “H” Humanities book: assuming that a smart interpretation of a finite set of materials thoroughly known to specialists, delivered in an authoritative voice, is good enough. For a long time, it actually might have been, but the current chaos embroiling the Humanities makes me suspect that time has passed.
This being said, Goldsworthy is very adept at his game, and excellent at writing in an accessible way. The result is both a pretty good primer on “what people told us about Augustus“, which is precious little, and on what modern historiography cannot be if it wants to stay relevant.
