257 pages
Published 2013
Read from October 23 to October 24
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Recently, a meme of sorts has been circulating, exposing just how much your average cis-het white guy thinks about the Roman Empire on a daily basis. The underlying cause, like so much else in this modern hellscape, is a careful system of fascist indoctrination. Empires and conquest are masculine. Discipline and obedience to order are masculine. Marching into new lands and holding an eagle banner aloft are masculine. You don’t wanna be a fem, right, buddy?
I’ve always been a history girl, and here in America, Romans are always propagandistically positioned as our spiritual and political forebears. Athens had a (severely circumscribed) “democracy,” sure, but Romans? They had a republic. Landed men of breeding and prestige ruling over a rabble of mindless plebeians, as God and George Washington intended. A lost golden age for mediocre white dudes. And when Julius Caesar marched in like a main character and turned that republic into a dictatorship — well, sure it was a shame, but wasn’t it full of glory? So yeah. It isn’t any surprise to me that white American men think a lot about the Romans. Just look at how they vote.
It sucks how much the Romans are used as a tool of rightwing propaganda, because I find the Roman era fascinating for entirely different reasons: culture contact spanning parts of three continents, the movements of people and trade goods, people from all corners of the empire winding up in every other corner of the empire. Villas in Yorkshire, mystery cults in London, garum unloaded along the Thames, Iraqis and Algerians manning Hadrian’s Wall — that’s what interests me. Fuck empire, fuck emperors, fuck the legions. Tell me about the day-to-day.
Naturally I picked up this book the moment I saw it in a used book store. But it was equally natural that I should avoid reading it, given our current descent into fascism. (Recall the etymology of fascist.) I felt a sort of shame at the current associations of Rome, even though no one else really reads my reviews. Plus, with an era so heavily propagandized, you never know if an author is going to hit you with some rightwing bullshit. I’d just rather not, you know?
Under Another Sky is less about recovering a sense of what Roman Britain was like and more about the cultural process of interpretation, investigating the ways various eras have construed the Roman period as a reflection of their own mores and outlooks — “manifestations of the historical imaginations of those who described them,” as Higgins puts it in her introduction. She expands: “‘Britain’ was an idea for the Romans. For us, ‘Roman Britain’ is also an idea….”
Higgins’ narrative is constructed from her own travels, by foot and by VW camper van, across Roman Britain. The result is thoroughly readable but somewhat journalistic, full of colorful locals who pop in for two paragraphs to help Higgins make a point, followed by an equally brief anecdote of a rain-thwarted picnic to add atmosphere. Long segments are dedicated to pocket biographies of 19th century antiquarians and 20th century archaeologists, and how their personal biases shaped their interpretations. Pretty standard stuff for contemporary non-fiction, but it doesn’t give a sense of depth, either to history or to Higgins’ journeys.
At times, though, Higgins’ prose and imagery are quite beautiful. The chapter in which she walks around the surviving traces of Londinium is particularly good. Another Sky is far from an information-dense tome, but it works perfectly well for what it is.
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