Romans and Aliens
by J P V D Balsdon
This book is about Rome’s image problems, its issues with bad PR. Balsdon juxtaposes Rome’s dominant outlook with examples of just how alien the Romans appeared to the rest of the world. Some of the chapter titles give you a flavour: ‘Snobbery begins at Rome’, ‘Bad Press for Rome’, ‘The Ghastly Bad Taste of the Romans’. It’s just jam-packed with information, out-of-the-way information, that’s really hard to find in any other book.
