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Title: Italy: A History
Author: Vincent Cole
Narrator: Matthew Lea-Wilson
Format: Unabridged
Length: 35 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-28-17
Publisher: Combray Media
Genres: History, European
Publisher's Summary:
The history of Italy begins with the arrival of the first hominins 850,000 years ago at Monte Poggiolo. Italy shows evidence of habitation by anatomically modern humans beginning about 43,000 years ago. It is reached by the Neolithic as early as 6000-5500 BC as evidenced by Cardium pottery and impressed ware.
The Italian Bronze Age begins around 1500 BC, likely corresponding to the arrival of Indo-European speakers, whose descendants would become the Italic peoples of the Iron Age; alongside the early Italic cultures, however, the Etruscan civilization in central Italy, Celts in northern Italy, and Greek colonies in the South flourished during the 8th to 5th centuries BC.
Members Reviews:
good book for somebody that wants to see how Italy ...
good book for somebody that wants to see how Italy started, what groups and political and religious groups influenced the culture.
A good read.
Learned new facts . A good read.
Well written, interesting cultural asides
This book was a quick read, well-written, and a good overview. A few parts (such as the section on World War II) seemed a bit thin, but there are other good sources for writing about that. The book covers two and a half millennia and so canât get bogged down in too much detail!
The book had many interesting facts. For example, I learned that while Italy appears to be a long âbootâ, its northern border stretches for 1,250 miles while its length is 750 miles â because of this long border the peninsula was hard to defend, resulting in numerous invasions over the millennia. I was surprised that one of the first incursions was in 390 B.C. by Gauls, âblue-eyed, fair-haired men from the land we now call France.â One usually thinks of Gaul being invaded by Rome.
In 343 BC, Rome began to conquer neighboring tribes and consolidated control over much of the central Italian peninsula. One secret of its success was that while earlier conquerors such as Athens in Greece had imposed tribute in the past, âRome, with greater political tact, imposed no tribute. It allowed allies to remain free and continue exercising local autonomy; they had only to supply troops for the defense of the federation as a whole. In peace, there was a community of interests, in war, the sense of fraternity arises when men, shoulder to shoulder, fight to the death.â
By 265 B.C., Rome completed the conquest of Italy and grew to a walled city with just under 1 million inhabitants.
The book contains the expected narrative of the rise and fall of the Republic, the brutal wars with Carthage, the expansion of the Empire and sections on the better known leaders including Sulla, Marius, Caesar, Augustus, Tragan, Hadrian, Commodus, Constantine, etc.
But what I appreciated most was the authorâs cultural asides. For example, he pointed out that the Romans tended to regard religion in legal terms. âTheir word for it means âbinding obligation,â and one of the qualities they most esteemed - pietas - means no more than âjustice toward the gods.â Their gods were abstract, utilitarian, and often personifications of moral qualities, such as Peace, Liberty, Victory, and Good Fortune.â
Later chapters covered the invasions of various tribes during the Fall of the Roman Empire, the âDark Agesâ, the rise of Florence, Venice, and the city-states, the Guelphs vs the Ghibellines, St.
