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ReviewsJulius Caesar | St. Patrick of Ireland | The Philosopher and the Druids Julius Caesar:Radio Interviews The Newark Star-Ledger: "The Mesmerizing Power of Ambition" You somehow made it through Latin II (Gallia est omis divisa in partres tres). You could remember just enough ancient Roman history, for just long enough, to spew it forth in your college blue book. So why would you ever want to go back to Gaul and the Rubicon and the events of the Ides of March to read a book titled "Julius Caesar"? Because of Philip Freeman, its author. Freeman, a professor of classics at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, is one of those rare writers whose enthusiasm for a subject is so irresistible, so contagious, that in their hands any subject becomes compelling. This book is just such a pleasant, unexpected surprise. There is no doubt about it: Caesar was a towering figure of world history. Alexander Hamilton even went so far as to call him "the greatest man who ever lived." But why? His military conquests alone are the stuff of legend -- how he added Gaul (now France), to the Roman Republic, pushed his troops beyond the known world in invading Britain, and returned the conquering hero from Egypt, Asia Minor and Africa to be anointed dictator and transformed into a polarizing divine figure. The interesting part of Caesar's story, though, and of this book, is how he did it. What makes a great leader? Caesar was born in 100 B.C. of impoverished patrician parents living in a slum of Rome, but al ways believed he was descended not only from kings but from gods. Being convinced of such lineage must really help one's self- confidence, and Caesar always acted accordingly. There's a wonderful story about Caesar at the age of 25 traveling to Rhodes to study ora tory. He never made it. His ship was captured by pirates, and how he responded says everything about his character. His captors demanded a ransom of 20 talents. Caesar was insulted; he patiently explained to the pirates that he was worth a ransom of 50 talents (300,000 silver coins) and sent the other members of his party to raise the money while he and two slaves stayed with the pirates as hostages. For the next 40 days, Caesar ran the pirates' lair, organizing athletic games, writing poetry for them, taunting and teasing them, ordering them to be quiet so he could sleep when they made too much noise at night, joking with them that he would return and have them all crucified. The pi rates were amused by their auda cious captive and thoroughly en joyed his company. When, on the 40th day, Caesar's friends re turned with the ransom, he waved goodbye to the pirates, quickly organized an expedition ary force, returned to their stronghold, seized all their loot -- including the 50 talents -- took it upon himself to throw the pirates into prison, and had each crucified. A polished orator, an adroit politician, an ingenious military commander, a man of boundless ambition and self-confidence who would take extraordinary risks, Caesar had in spades all the genetic characteristics of a leader. But let's be frank: an effective leader has to have the right look to inspire loyal followers, a look that exerts a power of attraction over everyone. He had it. Tall, fair, with piercing black eyes, Caesar at the age of 19 was sent by his military commander to the kingdom of Bithynia to bring back ships for the siege of an island. Caesar was surprisingly successful in getting the fleet he needed from King Nicomedes of Bithynia; he accomplished his mission with such alacrity by be coming the lover of the king. Decades later, on his victorious march home to Rome from Gaul, Caesar's soldiers sang bawdy songs which included the line: "Caesar conquered Gaul, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar." Caesar's effect on women is much better known. Married at 15, he was a notorious womanizer, with Cleopatra just one in a long line of conquests. (Another line of his troop's provocative songs was "Men of Rome, lock up your wives -- we bring you the bald adulterer!") In Freeman's hands, Caesar, usually a distant, mythic figure, becomes a real person. Authoritative, accessible, "Julius Caesar" is a book that will be of interest not only to those studying Latin and Roman history, but to anyone fascinated by the mesmerizing power of ambition. Publishers Weekly: "Freeman's cultural and historical knowledge bring the emperor to life and humanize him in a way no writer before him has succeeded in doing." Anthony Everitt, author of Augustus and Cicero: "Julius Caesar packed more into his life than most of history's great men - and Philip Freeman unpacks it all with skill and clarity. He takes the reader through every dizzying thrill and spill. The scholar will find much to admire in this book, but, better still, the newcomer to ancient Rome will turn its pages with excitement, enlightenment - and sheer narrative suspense." Paul Cartledge, author of The Spartans and Alexander the Great, Professor of Greek History, University of Cambridge: "Reading Philip Freeman's pacy and panoptic narrative of his life from unpromising early beginnings to the fateful Ides is one very rewarding approach to answering that perennially fascinating question." Barry Strauss, author of The Trojan War and Professor of History and Classics, Cornell University: "Elegant, learned, and compulsively readable, Julius Caesar moves from broad sweep to brilliant detail. Freeman triumphantly tells the story of one of history's greatest and most terrible figures. The author is as knowledgeable about Cleopatra's Alexandria as he is about Celtic tribes, and he writes about the Roman Senate with the assurance of an insider. Through it all, the figure of Caesar draws our attention and stimulates our deepest thoughts." KIRKUS REVIEWS Freeman, Philip / JULIUS CAESAR A fresh look at one of history's most dynamic and controversial figures. BOOKLIST The character and exploits of Gaius Julius Caesar continue to fascinate both historians and laymen, with good reason. His military conquest of Gaul spread Roman civilization beyond the confines of the Mediterranean Basin. His political reforms laid the basis for the imperium established by Augustus. His personal story is loaded with drama and adventure. St. Patrick of Ireland:Television Interviews Radio Interviews New York Times: "It seems that I've become something of a celebrity in recent years," the Romano-British churchman Patricius observed near the end of his long career, perhaps foreseeing the extravagant emerald mantle that would be wrapped about him by the cult of St. Patrick. In this lively and lucid biography, Philip Freeman…draws on the saint's surviving letters, including the eloquent "Confession," to glean personal details of Patrick's life and fit them into what is known of early Irish history. "Driving the snakes out of Ireland, entering contests to the death with pagan Druids, using the shamrock as an aid to explaining the Trinity — all these are pious fictions created centuries later by well-meaning monks," Freeman writes. "The true story of Patrick is far more compelling than the medieval legends." Patrick was neither Ireland's first Christian nor the country's first bishop. Patrick apologized for his lack of learning, for writing Latin "as if it were a foreign language," but he enriched his faith by bringing to it a race of stern confessors and exuberant artists. Wall Street Journal "Mr. Freeman's book succeeds where others have failed by giving us a wholly human portrait of Patrick the boy, the slave and the missionary." From Publishers Weekly Starred Review Born to an aristocratic British family in the fifth century, Patrick was kidnapped by slave raiders at age 15 and sold to an Irish farmer. After six years of tending sheep he escaped, walked 200 miles to a port city he had seen in a dream, and sailed for home. Years later, as a priest or bishop, he returned to Ireland. Bribing petty kings for safe passage through their rural domains, he preached, baptized and established churches in his beloved adopted land. This information about the saint's life is known from two lengthy letters he wrote late in life, both included in a lively translation by Freeman, a classics professor and author of three previous books about the Celtic world. Dismissing many familiar tales as myths, he relies on archeological discoveries as well as Greek and Roman writers to create a colorful picture of Ireland at the end of the Roman Empire: its kings and headhunting warriors, gods and human sacrifices, belief in the Otherworld. "I am a stranger and an exile living among barbarians and pagans, because God cares for them," Patrick wrote. Besides, time was running out: As Freeman observes, "The gospel had been preached throughout the world and was even then, by [Patrick's] own efforts, being spread to the most distant land of all. There was simply no reason for God's judgment to be delayed once the Irish had heard the good news." In the storytelling tradition of popular historian Thomas Cahill, this small book offers a fascinating and believable introduction to Ireland's patron saint. From School Library Journal Adult/High School–Readers will be drawn into the story of St. Patrick by the short preface that tells how the teen Patricius, accustomed to a life of ease and luxury in Roman Britain, was surprised and subdued in his parents' villa by Irish slave traders who led him and household servants in chains to boats that took them to the feared barbaric island. Freeman has based his biography on medieval copies of two letters written by Patrick near the end of his life. Each chapter opens with a few lines from one of them. The author has fleshed out the story using information from archaeological finds, Roman and medieval records, and Papal documents. When discussing Patrick's home, education, or experiences in Ireland, Freeman notes that he is describing what was typical in the fifth century. As readers learn about Patrick's captivity, servitude, and escape, they also find out about life in Roman Britain and Ireland. Marriage, fostering, the role of kings, and the practices of the druids are only a few of the topics covered. This is not a heavy academic tome; explanations are simple and clear. A time line, pronunciation guide, and 13 black-and-white photographs of archaeological sites and artifacts are included. From Booklist How do you write a biography of someone about whom what little is known may be myth rather than fact? Freeman's interdisciplinary strategy of analyzing both the texts of Patrick's time and the artifacts and monuments of his era allows a depiction of the world of the famous saint who converted Ireland. Thereby we learn, for instance, how slaves typically were treated in the years of the decline of the Roman Empire, and hence how Patrick was likely to have been treated during his years of captivity in Ireland. We learn about how Patrick might have interacted with Ireland's kings through examining the social structure of the late Celtic world. Well-researched and authoritatively written, Freeman's work may debunk some familiar stories, such as that of the shamrock sermon that converted the Druids (an invention dating centuries after Patrick's death), but it restores to the saint a complex, human dignity. Kirkus Reviews Freeman…sticks close to authenticated sources in this quick and rangy popular biography, which serves up a taste of life and times in Ireland and late-Roman Britain during the fifth century. Since the author prefers to expostulate on the facts as they are known and to set one piece aside another without forcing the fit, there is little narrative drive to his life of Ireland's patron saint-but then, Patrick wasn't given to high drama. Freeman's strength lies in his ability to bring a place to life in the mind's eye. Britain in the weak final years of Roman rule, before the medieval Anglo-Saxon community took hold, was an unstable terrain subject to raids by the Picts, Saxon, and Irish. A group of the latter spirited Patrick away from his family and into slavery on (most likely) the west coast of Ireland. The author is patient with the material; when he notes that Patrick's family were nobles and farmers, he discusses the nature of Roman governance and the look and feel of a typical British villa/farmstead, all of which adds terrific color to the story. Infectiously smitten with the age, if perhaps less so with the saint, Freeman delights with overviews of the political and social landscape Patrick entered upon his return to Ireland, as well as the spiritual environment that was already in place. He delivers a sharp, elementary course in traditional local religions, including Druidism, and the role of celibate women in the early Christian church. He describes Patrick's Confessions, actually one of only two extant letters from the saint, as a "window into the soul of a person," far more intimate than Cicero's letters or Augustine's Confessions and, as such, "like no other document from ancient times." A solid grounding to the saint's life that provides the footing necessary to explore more speculative works like, for example, E.A. Thompson's Who Was Saint Patrick? (1986). The Seattle Times Book Review: 'St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography' captures soul of extraordinary figure As St. Patrick's Day approaches, a new biography, "St. Patrick of Ireland," fleshes out the life of Ireland's celebrated patron saint. With uncommon insight and clear, unadorned prose, Philip Freeman supplants old myths with a true-life tale no less wondrous. No snake herding or mystic battles with druids and kings here, just the intriguing story of a runaway slave who changed the course of Irish history. The Philosopher and the DruidsAudio Interview Harper's Magazine (February 2006) by John Leonard: Nonviolence was not only not an option, it was probably not even a concept among imperial Romans and tribal Celts with whom we spend a surprisingly amiable time in Philip Freeman's The Philosopher and the Druids: A Journey Among the Ancient Celts (Simon & Schuster, $25). Freeman, a classics scholar who teaches at Luther College in Iowa and visits at the Harvard Divinity School, has hitched his narrative wagon to those fragments that survive of a History scribbled down on fifty-two papyrus scrolls by a Syrian-born Greek philosopher and Stoic named Posidonius, who embarked by cargo ship in the first century B.C. to Rome, Cadiz, Massalia (Marseilles), and the wild interior of Gaul, where he would spend a couple of years eating meat, drinking wine, and taking ethnographic notes under the watchful gaze of the severed heads of the many enemies of his colorful hosts. Booklist: Sometime in the first century B.C., the Greek philosopher Posidonius traveled among the "barbaric" people known today as the Celts. His written account of that adventure is essentially lost, though fragments of it exist as citations by other ancient authors. Freeman set himself to reconstruct the route of Posidonius and to conjure, from other writings and from archaeological sources, what Posidonius would have experienced. In vivid, sometimes breezy language, Freeman describes the landscapes among which the Celtic tribes lived as well as their appearance and daily life. Most fascinating are his reconstructions of Celtic warfare and how a Greek stranger might have witnessed it, and his examination of the druidic religious faith of the Celts. This book, which fills a void in the academic literature, is written so clearly and compellingly that it should be a crossover hit with a general, popular readership as well. Library Journal: Freeman (Classics, Luther College; St. Patrick of Ireland) aims to piece together the lost account of the first-century B.C.E. journey of the Stoic philosopher Posidonius from Rhodes into the wild Celtic northlands in Gaul (now parts of Spain and France). Along the way, Freeman describes Posidonius's education and training as well as the range of knowledge available to him about the Celts, skillfully quoting from many different ancient narratives with his own translations. Although the supposition in Rhodes had been that the Celts were a race of savages, Posidonius discovered that they were a complex and articulate society—albeit one that practiced a ritual involving human sacrifice. The philosopher's account proved to be a valuable study of a people soon to be conquered by Julius Caesar. In examining ancient Celtic history and culture in tandem with Greek and Roman attitudes, Freeman has turned out an engrossing study that both students and lay readers will enjoy. Highly recommended for public and undergraduate collections. Kirkus Reviews Recreating a vanished Celtic society through the eyes of a scholar traveling in the first century B.C. Historian Freeman (Classics/Luther College), who has written extensively on ancient Celtic culture, languages and interaction with classical civilizations of Rome and Greece, here focuses on surviving fragments from the writings of the Syrian-born (ca. 135 B.C.) Greek philosopher Posidonius. There are problems, however, since almost all of Posidonius's writings on his extensive travels, primarily through lands of the Gaulish tribes in Western Europe, have been lost and are accessible only through other contemporary and later writers. The author ably bridges gaps in the record, but the speculative refrain of "surely Posidonius" did this or that in the company of Celts, or visited a particular tribal capitol, etc., does become distracting. His point is well taken that at least here was a learned person putting himself at risk in order to apprehend Celtic culture for posterity with no particular axe to grind-or wield, as in the case of another prolific reporter on Celtic customs, their Roman conqueror Julius Caesar (whom Freeman also cites). Somewhat out of kilter with the book's title, the focus does not narrow to the Druids, specifically, until near the end, with Freeman acknowledging that "All the Greek and Latin passages we have left on the ancient Druids would fit comfortably on a single sheet of paper." Nonetheless, the author confidently builds on archaeological evidence of their role in Celtic society; they did not worship trees, he asserts, although mistletoe was commonly used in rites that did include "occasional" human sacrifices. When at his best, Freeman clearly connects touchstones of Celtic culture to practices that persisted in Ireland, some even into the 20th century. A brisk and illuminating overview of how Celts impacted their world and ours. |
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