Peter Stothard - On the Spartacus Road - A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Peter Stothard - On the Spartacus Road - A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: unrecognised, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

In this inspiring and original book, former editor of The Times, Sir Peter Stothard, re-traces the journey taken by Spartacus and his army of rebels.In the final century of the first Roman Republic an army of slaves brought a peculiar terror to the people of Italy. Its leaders were gladiators. Its purpose was incomprehensible. Its success was something no one before had ever known.The Spartacus Road is the route along which this rebel army outfought the Roman legions between 73 and 71BC, bringing both fears and hopes that have never wholly left the modern mind. It is a road that stretches through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside and out into 2,000 years of world history.In this inspiring and original memoir, the former editor of The Times, Peter Stothard, takes us on an extraordinary journey. The result is a book like none other – at once a journalist’s notebook, a classicist’s celebration, a survivor’s record of a near fatal cancer and the history of a unique and brutal war.As he travels along the Spartacus road – through the ruins of Capua to Vesuvius and the lost Greek cities of the Italian south – Stothard’s prose illuminates conflicting memories of times ancient and modern, the simultaneously foreign and familiar, one of the greatest stories of all ages. Sweepingly erudite and strikingly personal, “On the Spartacus Road” is non-fiction writing of the highest order.

On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать
On the Spartacus Road A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy - изображение 1

ON THE

SPARTACUS ROAD

On the Spartacus Road A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy - изображение 2

A SPECTACULAR JOURNEY THROUGH

ANCIENT ITALY

Peter Stothard

On the Spartacus Road A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy - изображение 3

To Anna and Michael

Contents

On the Spartacus Road A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy - изображение 4

Cover

Title Page ON THE SPARTACUS ROAD

Dedication To Anna and Michael

Prologue

I

ROME to ARICCIA

SAXON SUICIDES | SENATOR SYMMACHUS REGRETS | FINISHING SCHOOLS | TOO MANY FOREIGNERS | RIDDLE OF THE NUMBER 3 | CHEMISTRY WITH KIRK DOUGLAS | CAPUAN CARLO’S VIRGIN

II

ARICCIA to BENEVENTO

SPECTACULAR | POPLIOS PAPINIOS STATIOS | DWARF-EATING BIRDS | NAZI REVENGE | A CANCER CALLED NERO | HOW TO DIE WELL | HORACE AND HIS FATHER | HACKSAW TEETH

III

CAPUA to ACERRA

SPARTACUS LEAVES THE KITCHEN | CONTRACT KILLERS | CURIOUS KOREANS | SABBIO’S LAS VEGAS | BUSH E SHARON = CRIMINALI | FLORUS OF FLEET STREET | WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND | MOUNTAIN MONSTER

IV

VESUVIUS to POMPEII

SLAVES ON A VOLCANO | EPICURUS IN SCOTLAND | DEATH AND HIS HALF-BROTHER SLEEP | A BOXER FROM THEBES | HOW TO SUCCEED IN SELLING PLATES | WHAT PAIN DOES TO THE BRAIN

V

POMPEII to NUCERIA

TERROR, RAPE AND REVENGE | CESSPOOLS IN OUR STREETS | VIRTUAL HERCULANEUM | A VICAR FROM ESSEX | SPARTACUS TRIUMPHANT | LOST LIBRARIES BY THE SEA

VI

EGNAZIA to BOTROMAGNO

SOUTH FOR THE WINTER | MAGICIANS AND CASTRATI | GREEKS VS TROJANS | ARTHUR KOESTLER’S CRUCIFIXIONS | EARLY CASES OF SYPHILIS | MASSACRE OF THE HORSE-BUILDER’S MEN | BODY SCANS | THE DUTIES OF SLAVE WOMEN

VII

GARGANO to POGNANA

VICTORY FOR A PHILOSOPHICAL CONSUL | IN THE HOUSE OF ARCHANGEL MICHAEL | HUMAN ENTRAILS AROUND THEIR WAISTS | CALLS OF CROWS | CORPSES ON THE BEACHES | HOW SPARTACUS LOST HIS HOLLYWOOD WAR

VIII

TORNO to PICENTINO

GHOST-HUNTING WITH THE YOGURT-SELLER | TO LEAVE ITALY OR TO FIGHT ROME | IN A CHEMO-FUELLED ROSE GARDEN | SOLID GOLD PISS-POTS | ENTER MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS

IX

REGGIO CALABRIA to BUCCINO~VOLCEI

POPCORN FOR PLUTARCH | COIUMNS IN THE PRESS | BETRAYED BY PIRATES | MAN A AND MAN B | AT THE BITTER-SWEET LAKE | WHEN THE WAR WAS OVER

X

SORRENTO to ROME

HOW TO LIVE A HAPPY LIFE | MARBLE MIMICS GRASS | THINGS TO DO WITH DEFEATED SLAVES | CRUCIFIED IN THEORY | A HEAD FULL OF MOITEN GOLD AND OTHER AFTERMATHS

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

On the Spartacus Road A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy - изображение 5

In the final century of the first Roman Republic an army of slaves brought a peculiar terror to the people of Italy. Its leaders were gladiators. Its purpose was incomprehensible. Its success was something no one had ever known. Never before had the world’s greatest state been threatened from the lowest places that its citizens could imagine, from inside its own kitchens, laundries, mines, fields and theatres. Never again, the victors said when Spartacus was dead and his war was over.

The Spartacus Road is the route along which the slave army fought its Roman enemies between 73 and 71 BC. It is a road much travelled then and since by poets and philosophers, politicians and teachers, torturers and terrorisers of different times, those living today and those long ago dead, innovative thinkers about fear and death, some with truths to teach us, others whom we can try to forget. It stretches through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside and out into 2,000 years of world history. From Sicily to the Alps and from Paris to Hollywood, it has never wholly left the modern mind.

This book is a diary of a journey on that Spartacus Road. It is, in part, a journalist’s notebook because I have been a journalist—a newspaper reporter and editor—for most of my life. It is a classicist’s notebook, written with half-remembered classical books for company, because while reporting politics in our own time I have so often felt the beat of ancient feet. It is also the notebook of a grateful survivor: ten years ago I was given no chance of living to make this trip and, on the Spartacus Road, the memory of a fatal cancer and its fortuitous cure shone stronger, and stranger, than I ever thought it could.

Little of this book is as I thought it might be. It began as notes written night by night, on bar tables and brick walls, in the places where the Spartacus War was fought. It became a history of that war, the best that I could write, and the history of how I came to know anything about that war, other wars, and many other things.

Thanks are owed to Greek and Roman writers whom I thought I knew when I was young and know differently now. Returning to old books is like returning to old friends. They have changed, both the familiar characters studied at school and some of the less read ancients, a director of Roman water supplies, a historian who was a lovable tabloid hack, a pioneer writer on interior décor and on the apocalypse. Thanks too to some equally little-known twenty-first-century travellers, a pair of Koreans, an actor seeking centurion roles, a Pole selling DVDs and a bibulous priest.

The barest facts about Spartacus, like the road itself, are often hard to find. They disappear and reappear—in the landscape and in the memory of succeeding centuries. They have been twisted in the service of cinema, politics and art. There is Spartacus the romantic gladiator from Thrace, the fighter for freedom, the man who lives on in the memory of emulators; and there is Spartacus the terrorist and threat to life, the one who survives in others’ fears. There is the hidden man and the man of the Spectacular, the word which appeared on the first page of my first notes and is left still in the subtitle of this book, the Romans’ own name for the theatrical games and aesthetic of death that so powerfully defined both their lives and our memories of them.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x