Detail from “Modern Rome” by JMW Turner (1839). Robert Hughes’s history captures the undying sense of astonishment at the city
Romeby Robert Hughes (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25)
Australian critic Robert Hughes took the art world by storm in 1980 with his television series The Shock of the New. He took the enigma of modern art and expertly dissected it into comprehensible and even palatable nuggets. With that formidable notch in his belt, Hughes has gone on to explore the wonder of the old, attempting to master and present the 3,000 year-old history of the Eternal City in his latest book, Rome.
With a background in journalism and television, Hughes would seem well suited to compress the rich and continuous history from Rome’s foundation to the modern age into a fast-paced readable narrative. Indeed, he bears more than a passing resemblance to Rome’s ubiquitous tour guides: lively storytelling enthralls the reader from page one. Romulus, Hannibal and the Caesars parade through the pages in the same way that ancient ruins seem to return to life as they are described on the sunny deck of a tour bus.
The narrative is peppered with riveting facts, from the uniforms and weapons of the Roman legions to the speed of its fleet. At times, the reader is dodging chamberpots in narrow streets, at others reclining in the tepidarium of an imperial bathhouse. Hughes delves frequently into the historical treasure trove of salacious detail, the tour guide’s most effective anti-soporific. The style is so pleasing that it might be required reading for Roman guides, but regrettably, the author offers no notes on the sources of his torrent of details.
In the 4th century, the smooth jaunt hits a major bump. Hughes’s attentive research slips with the reign of Constantine. Following the example of the Roman Ciceroni, he treats facts regarding Christianity much less carefully. According to Hughes, Christianity under Constantine became the “most favoured religion,” and thus took over through “social pressures.” But Constantine’s edict merely put Christianity on the same status as the myriad other cults in Rome. He plays hard and fast with dates from the 3rd to 5th century to produce the illusion that Christians were administratively at the helm of the city long before the sacks and abandonment of the city forced the church to take the rudder. A clumsy error regarding the sacrament of confession is just one of the potholes that he hits.
The ecclesiastical cynicism of Hughes, evident throughout the book, often blinds him to the reality of Christian Rome. As he records a crush of pilgrims trampling a visiting priest while crowding to see the relics of the Passion, he says the possibility that “such a thing could happen today is, to put it mildly, unlikely,” overlooking the eager tide of 1m people at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Scholarship turns into polemic when he writes, “within the soul of Constantine an innate sadism was looking for an outlet and found it in the misogynistic lunacies of Christian asceticism.”
After a shaky ride through the middle ages, the road clears somewhat for the Renaissance. Here Hughes takes the reader through the wonders of 16th-century Rome. The achievement of the Sistine chapel and the elegance of Raphael are pithily yet enjoyably described (although Hughes inexplicably clings to the old myth that Michelangelo painted the chapel lying on his back, despite evidence to the contrary from the artist himself). The author’s appreciation and acknowledgment of the popes who reshaped Rome in the Baroque era often outweighs the gossipy portraits he paints of the men themselves.
Unsurprisingly, Hughes finds himself very much at home in the age of the grand tour. His narrative frequently pauses for fascinating citations from the writings of the multitude of Europeans who came to be awed by the greatness of ancient Rome, while raising supercilious eyebrows at its denizens. Unfortunately, he has also absorbed the well-worn clichés his grand tour predecessors originated: titillating interpretations of Bernini’s St Teresa in Ecstasy; chicanery of the Roman people; distress at the Christian accretions to the pagan city.
The story arrives in the modern age with a flourish, steering the reader through the baffling complexities of contemporary Italy. Back on his own turf, Hughes anchors historical events to the art of the 20th century, rendering everything from the Futurists to Fellini both engaging and comprehensible.
The book would end on a high note if he had left it at “the undying sense of astonishment at this city of prodigious and overweening ambition,” but the epilogue, regarding the upkeep of the city in the age of mass tourism, sounds much like the ranting of a tired tourist in the scorching heat of mid-July. Oblivious to the extraordinary efforts Rome has made to clean every major monument, open previously closed sites, and welcome the estimated 25-30m tourists per year, Hughes goes so far as to dismiss the Italian people as “artistic illiterates.” One can only imagine the reception of a history of London that closed with the claim that the English are indifferent to the royal family. This flash of elitism drags the book back several centuries to the age of the foreign connoisseurs disdaining their Italian hosts—an ungracious close to this epic ride.
In recent years, only Christopher Hibbert has tackled the daunting task of compressing Rome’s unwieldy history into a single tome. In his Rome: Biography of a City (1985) Hibbert commands a superior sense of the flow of history, while Hughes offers the more vivid sketches and dazzling data. Perhaps Hughes would have done better to follow the example of his 19th-century predecessors such as Ludwig Pastor, who narrowed his study to Papal Rome, or Ferdinand Gregorovius’s focus on the medieval age. Or better yet, Edward Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has left clear genetic tracks in these pages. Nevertheless, in this Herculean undertaking, Hughes has captured much of the true spirit of Rome: the aspiration to great achievement despite obstacles, setbacks or failures.
Romeby Robert Hughes (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25)
Australian critic Robert Hughes took the art world by storm in 1980 with his television series The Shock of the New. He took the enigma of modern art and expertly dissected it into comprehensible and even palatable nuggets. With that formidable notch in his belt, Hughes has gone on to explore the wonder of the old, attempting to master and present the 3,000 year-old history of the Eternal City in his latest book, Rome.
With a background in journalism and television, Hughes would seem well suited to compress the rich and continuous history from Rome’s foundation to the modern age into a fast-paced readable narrative. Indeed, he bears more than a passing resemblance to Rome’s ubiquitous tour guides: lively storytelling enthralls the reader from page one. Romulus, Hannibal and the Caesars parade through the pages in the same way that ancient ruins seem to return to life as they are described on the sunny deck of a tour bus.
The narrative is peppered with riveting facts, from the uniforms and weapons of the Roman legions to the speed of its fleet. At times, the reader is dodging chamberpots in narrow streets, at others reclining in the tepidarium of an imperial bathhouse. Hughes delves frequently into the historical treasure trove of salacious detail, the tour guide’s most effective anti-soporific. The style is so pleasing that it might be required reading for Roman guides, but regrettably, the author offers no notes on the sources of his torrent of details.
In the 4th century, the smooth jaunt hits a major bump. Hughes’s attentive research slips with the reign of Constantine. Following the example of the Roman Ciceroni, he treats facts regarding Christianity much less carefully. According to Hughes, Christianity under Constantine became the “most favoured religion,” and thus took over through “social pressures.” But Constantine’s edict merely put Christianity on the same status as the myriad other cults in Rome. He plays hard and fast with dates from the 3rd to 5th century to produce the illusion that Christians were administratively at the helm of the city long before the sacks and abandonment of the city forced the church to take the rudder. A clumsy error regarding the sacrament of confession is just one of the potholes that he hits.
The ecclesiastical cynicism of Hughes, evident throughout the book, often blinds him to the reality of Christian Rome. As he records a crush of pilgrims trampling a visiting priest while crowding to see the relics of the Passion, he says the possibility that “such a thing could happen today is, to put it mildly, unlikely,” overlooking the eager tide of 1m people at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Scholarship turns into polemic when he writes, “within the soul of Constantine an innate sadism was looking for an outlet and found it in the misogynistic lunacies of Christian asceticism.”
After a shaky ride through the middle ages, the road clears somewhat for the Renaissance. Here Hughes takes the reader through the wonders of 16th-century Rome. The achievement of the Sistine chapel and the elegance of Raphael are pithily yet enjoyably described (although Hughes inexplicably clings to the old myth that Michelangelo painted the chapel lying on his back, despite evidence to the contrary from the artist himself). The author’s appreciation and acknowledgment of the popes who reshaped Rome in the Baroque era often outweighs the gossipy portraits he paints of the men themselves.
Unsurprisingly, Hughes finds himself very much at home in the age of the grand tour. His narrative frequently pauses for fascinating citations from the writings of the multitude of Europeans who came to be awed by the greatness of ancient Rome, while raising supercilious eyebrows at its denizens. Unfortunately, he has also absorbed the well-worn clichés his grand tour predecessors originated: titillating interpretations of Bernini’s St Teresa in Ecstasy; chicanery of the Roman people; distress at the Christian accretions to the pagan city.
The story arrives in the modern age with a flourish, steering the reader through the baffling complexities of contemporary Italy. Back on his own turf, Hughes anchors historical events to the art of the 20th century, rendering everything from the Futurists to Fellini both engaging and comprehensible.
The book would end on a high note if he had left it at “the undying sense of astonishment at this city of prodigious and overweening ambition,” but the epilogue, regarding the upkeep of the city in the age of mass tourism, sounds much like the ranting of a tired tourist in the scorching heat of mid-July. Oblivious to the extraordinary efforts Rome has made to clean every major monument, open previously closed sites, and welcome the estimated 25-30m tourists per year, Hughes goes so far as to dismiss the Italian people as “artistic illiterates.” One can only imagine the reception of a history of London that closed with the claim that the English are indifferent to the royal family. This flash of elitism drags the book back several centuries to the age of the foreign connoisseurs disdaining their Italian hosts—an ungracious close to this epic ride.
In recent years, only Christopher Hibbert has tackled the daunting task of compressing Rome’s unwieldy history into a single tome. In his Rome: Biography of a City (1985) Hibbert commands a superior sense of the flow of history, while Hughes offers the more vivid sketches and dazzling data. Perhaps Hughes would have done better to follow the example of his 19th-century predecessors such as Ludwig Pastor, who narrowed his study to Papal Rome, or Ferdinand Gregorovius’s focus on the medieval age. Or better yet, Edward Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has left clear genetic tracks in these pages. Nevertheless, in this Herculean undertaking, Hughes has captured much of the true spirit of Rome: the aspiration to great achievement despite obstacles, setbacks or failures.
