Book Review

 

Following Caesar: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire

By John Keahey

There are few experiences that I can think of that are as exhilarating as standing in a location where earth-changing events have taken place. To look out over The Cornfield at Antietam or to stand on the spot where Martin Luther King said 'I have a dream' is to feel in touch with the energy that drives our existence. I suspect that this philosophy is what drove retired reporter John Keahey to spend three months in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic to follow in the footsteps of the armies, generals, statesmen, scholars and apostles who traveled over those great Roman roads, the Via Appia and the Via Egnatia, roads that stretched from Rome to Byzantium. In this tremendous bout history tourism, Keahey would travel from village to village along the route, seeking and recruiting local historical authorities to serve as guides, showing him bits of the ancient roads, often lying several feet underground, and other little-known ruins from millennia past. This, to me, sounds like the perfect way to travel, meeting and befriending locals and listening to what they have to say about the world they know. I'll leave it to the scholars to decide whether it is the best way to advance the knowledge of our distant past.

I'd like to thank NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review of this book. I suspect that I would have enjoyed and appreciated this book much more if it had the maps and photos that I'm sure the published edition will contain but, aware that ARC's seldom have these, I contented myself to imagine what my poor understanding of geography allowed me to picture.

Bottom line: I enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone planning to travel through southern Europe in search of history.

As mentioned above, the review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on its content.