Dangerous Days in the Roman Empire: Terrors and Torments, Diseases and Deaths

ISBN-13: 9781780226354 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 266 str.

Terry Deary

Opis

The author of children's series Horrible Histories presentsthe first bookinhis new offbeatpopular historyseries for adults Bill Bryson meets Blackadder" With his trademark crisp, wry writing style and dark sense of humor, Terry Deary begins with the Roman Empire, in the first ina new series offering concise, informative histories that delve intomyths and traditions surrounding its subjects and attempts to extract cohesion and possibly even some truth. The Romans have long been held up as one of the first "civilized" societies, and yet in fact they were capable of immense cruelty. Not only that, but they made the killing of humans into a sport. The spoiled emperors were the perpetrators (and sometimes the victims) of some imaginative murders.This bookincludes some of the violent ways to visit the Elysian Fields (i.e. death), including byanimal attack in the Coliseum; by being thrown from the Tarpeian Rock the fate of 370 deserters in 214 AD alone (could also occurif the emperor didn't like your poetry); by volcanic eruption from Vesuvius; by kicking (Nero's fatal quarrel with the Empress Poppea); or from poison mushrooms (Claudius). Not to mention great fires, torturous tarring, flogging to death, boiling lead (the invention of "kind" Emperor Constantine), or being skinned alive by invading barbarians. This book looks at the backstory leading up to the victims' deaths, and in doing so gives the general reader a concise history of a frequently misunderstood era."

O autorze

Terry Deary was born in Sunderland in 1946 and now lives in County Durham, where the Marsden family of the Tudor Chronicles live. Once an actor and a teacher of English and drama, he is one of Britain's bestselling children's authors, with over 140 books to his credit, including the phenomenally successful Horrible Histories.