Reprieved

Since the post at reference 1, I have continued to dip into this book (reference 2) about the doings of Roman emperors from time to time. But latterly, I been starting to wonder whether I should be giving quality time to such a book when there is so much else to do. So many unread (or half read), more recent books lying around the study. Is it time for it to be retired?

But then on Friday, I noticed a near full page obituary of the author, Sir Fergus Millar, in the Guardian, where I read that Sir Fergus was an eminent scholar of the old school, one who probably regretted the passing of the Oxford of his youth in the late 1950's and the rise of numbers, bureaucracy and worries about funding. And this was probably his best known book.

So I have decided that it should be reprieved and that the axe should fall instead on some other work, some other fat tome which has been decorating our book shelves for little more than symbolic reasons for far too long.

PS: fairly sure that I never paid anything like $50 for my copy, with or without postage. Fairly sure also that I bought it in a shop, rather than knowing about it first and then clicking it. Furthermore, while the cover illustrated above is the same as that on my copy, the books there are said to come from Cornell, which mine most definitely does not. Duckworth.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/records-old-and-new.html.

Reference 2: The Emperor in the Roman World - Fergus Millar - 1977.