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Count Belisarius
- Narrated by: Laurence Kennedy
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
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I, Claudius lover impressed with abridging
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Unacceptable! Heavily redacted version should be sold as "ABRIDGED"!!
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Publisher's summary
The sixth-century Roman Empire is a dangerous place, threatened on all frontiers by invaders. But soon the attacking armies of Vandals, Goths and Persians grow to fear and respect the name of one man, Belisarius: horseman, archer, swordsman and military commander of genius. As Belisarius triumphs in battles from the East to North Africa, his success causes him to become regarded with increasing jealousy and suspicion. In his palace in Constantinople, the Emperor Justinian, dominated by his wife Theodora, plots the great general’s downfall. Written in the form of a biography by Belisarius’ manservant, this epic historical novel portrays him as a lone man of honour in a corrupt world.
Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet and novelist, scholar, translator and writer of antiquity, specialising in Classical Greece and Rome. During his long life he produced more than 140 works. Graves's translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths, the memoir of his early life, Good-bye to all That, and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of print. Graves earned his living by writing popular historical novels, including I, Claudius (for which he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), King Jesus, The Golden Fleece and Count Belisarius. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961 and made an honorary fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, in 1971.
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- By: Thomas B. Costain
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas B. Costain's four-volume history of the Plantagenets begins with The Conquering Family and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, closing with the reign of John in 1216. The troubled period after the Norman Conquest, when the foundations of government were hammered out between monarch and people, comes to life through Costain's storytelling skill and historical imagination.
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An Entrancing History of the Early Plantegenets
- By Peter on 01-20-09
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I, Claudius
- By: Robert Graves
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is one of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself. Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction.
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Unsurpassed, addictive brilliance
- By Chris on 06-09-09
By: Robert Graves
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Winning His Spurs
- A Tale of the Crusades
- By: George Alfred Henty
- Narrated by: Jim Hodges
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Mr. Henty weaves a story of the life and times of King Richard the Lion-hearted that is yet to be equaled. Cuthbert de Lance, the hero of the story, is of Norman blood on his father's side and Saxon by his mother. By providing timely aid to the Earl of Evesham, Cuthbert is rewarded by being allowed to go to the Crusade as his page. He gains a reputation for valor and prowess due to gallant deeds, and his resourcefulness not only helps King Richard but aids Cuthbert in many a 'hairbreadth escape'.
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Fantastic adventure for all ages!
- By Stacie on 01-22-20
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The Crusades
- By: Abigail Archer
- Narrated by: Sarah Nichols
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Looking into the past, the Crusades seem incomprehensible. What combination of religious fervor, hatred of people of different faiths, and gall led Europeans of AD 1100 to make their way thousands of miles to conquer the Holy Land? Why did they continue for 200 years? How did the Crusades change the world? The intriguing story is peppered with colorful characters. Over the centuries crusaders saw - and participated in - the evolution of warfare and the transformation of society from feudal fiefdoms to nations and empires.
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Good but hits pitfalls
- By Ky on 01-06-21
By: Abigail Archer
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The Black Prince
- England's Greatest Medieval Warrior
- By: Michael Jones
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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As a child, he was given his own suit of armor; at the age of 16, he helped defeat the French at Crecy. At Poitiers, in 1356, his victory over King John II of France forced the French into a humiliating surrender that marked the zenith of England's dominance in the Hundred Years War. As lord of Aquitaine, he ruled a vast swathe of territory across the west and southwest of France, holding a magnificent court at Bordeaux that mesmerized the brave but unruly Gascon nobility. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, and better known to posterity as "the Black Prince".
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Outstanding history
- By Scott on 02-17-19
By: Michael Jones
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Defenders of the Faith
- Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe, 1520-1536
- By: James Reston Jr.
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In the best-selling Warriors of God and Dogs of God, James Reston Jr. limned two epochal conflicts between Islam and Christendom. Here he examines the ultimate battle in that centuries-long war, which found Europe at its most vulnerable and Islam on the attack. This drama was propelled by two astonishing young sovereigns: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Turkish sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. Though they represented two colliding worlds, they were remarkably similar.
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Good account of interesting period of history
- By ItalCali on 03-11-22
By: James Reston Jr.
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The Templars
- The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Jones
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1307, as they struggled to secure their last strongholds in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars fell afoul of the vindictive and impulsive king of France. On Friday, October 13, hundreds of brothers were arrested en masse, imprisoned, tortured, and disbanded amid accusations of lurid sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Vatican in secret proceedings. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state?
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Unexpected
- By Protogere on 10-30-17
By: Dan Jones
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Koh-i-Noor
- The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond
- By: Anita Anand, William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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On 29 March 1849, the 10-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the centre of the great Fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company in a formal act of submission not only swathes of the richest land in India but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond. The Mountain of Light.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 07-08-17
By: Anita Anand, and others
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A Distant Mirror
- The Calamitous Fourteenth Century
- By: Barbara W. Tuchman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 28 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.
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And you thought the twentieth century was rough...
- By Rob on 03-23-06
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Unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given
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Unacceptable! Heavily redacted version should be sold as "ABRIDGED"!!
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Here is one of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself. Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction.
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Unsurpassed, addictive brilliance
- By Chris on 06-09-09
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Robert Graves first came across the name of Roger Lamb in 1914, when he was an English officer instructing his platoon in regimental history. Lamb was a British soldier who had served his king during the American War of Independent, and whose claim to a footnote in history is that he managed to escape twice from American prison camps.
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First person account of the Revolutionary war
- By Beast41R on 06-09-16
By: Robert Graves
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Homer's Daughter
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In Homer's Daughter Robert Graves recreates the Odyssey. This bold retelling of the ancient epic imagines that its author was not the blind and bearded Homer of legend, but a young woman in Western Sicily who calls herself Nausicaä.
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One of Graves' best.
- By Gail N. on 12-30-18
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nice "factual" recreation
- By Darryl on 08-28-13
By: Robert Graves
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Robert Graves's controversial historical novel is a bold reworking of the story of Christ. Here Jesus is not the son of God, but the result of a secret marriage - the descendant of Herod and true King of the Jews. Written from the perspective of a lowly official at the end of the first century AD, King Jesus recounts Jesus's birth, youth, life as a charismatic 'wonder worker' and the unorthodox, bitter nature of his death and resurrection. Portraying Jesus not as divine but as a flawed human bent upon his own doom, this retelling of the gospels is a compelling blend of research
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Unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given
- By Darwin8u on 12-25-13
By: Robert Graves
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Unacceptable! Heavily redacted version should be sold as "ABRIDGED"!!
- By Jonathan M. Stone on 02-23-17
By: Robert Graves
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I, Claudius
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Unsurpassed, addictive brilliance
- By Chris on 06-09-09
By: Robert Graves
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Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth
- By: Robert Graves
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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First person account of the Revolutionary war
- By Beast41R on 06-09-16
By: Robert Graves
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One of Graves' best.
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Derek Jacobi IS Claudius
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I, Claudius lover impressed with abridging
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By: Robert Graves
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The Deified King of Historical Fiction
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By: Robert Graves
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Julian
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Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign.
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Brilliant narration!
- By Abhishek Deepak on 10-23-19
By: Gore Vidal
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God's Shadow
- Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Alan Mikhail
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
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Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).
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Entertaining narrative, but poor scholarship
- By Yosemite on 09-15-20
By: Alan Mikhail
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The Last Dying Light
- The Last of the Romans, Book 1
- By: William Havelock
- Narrated by: Zach Hoffman
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Rome has fallen into darkness. Its legacy remains alive in Constantinople, whose leaders struggle to retain control. Yet famine, war, and an encroaching night leave the Eastern Empire towards ruin. Faint hope arises as a new dynasty ascends the throne of Caesar. Bearing witness to such events is Varus, a young Herulian slave to the aging yet powerful Justin, who unveils a bold plan held by two generations of Romans - to retake the West and reclaim their homeland.
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Couldn't Stop Listening
- By Codi Norton on 07-16-21
By: William Havelock
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Goodbye to All That
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A famous autobiographical account of life as a young soldier in the first World War trenches. Robert Graves, who went on to write I, Claudius, has given to posterity here one of the all-time great insights into the experience of war.
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An honest and well-written--ABRIDGED--WWI Memoir
- By Jefferson on 03-26-12
By: Robert Graves
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My Head! My Head!
- By: Robert Graves
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
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- Unabridged
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Written in 1925, My Head! My Head! was Robert Graves's first novel - a retelling of the story of Elisha and the Shunamite woman. Graves amplifies the brief Old Testament story into a series of dramatic encounters between the wandering prophet and his inquisitive, quick-witted hostess, who, by skilful questioning, prizes from Elisha the secret religious history of ancient Israel and the true story of the patriarch Moses.
By: Robert Graves
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Return of a King
- The Battle for Afghanistan
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Sagar Arya
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In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the 19th century.
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Tragic story excellently told
- By Shane Hensley on 06-09-21
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Heart of Europe
- A History of the Holy Roman Empire
- By: Peter H. Wilson
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- Length: 34 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Holy Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years, far longer than ancient Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire quipped that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter H. Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states.
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Mixed feelings on this one.
- By Stuart Seymour on 09-19-17
By: Peter H. Wilson
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A Man at Arms
- By: Steven Pressfield
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Jerusalem and the Sinai desert, AD 55. In the turbulent aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus, agents of the Roman Empire receive information about a pilgrim bearing an incendiary letter from a religious fanatic calling himself Paul the Apostle to insurrectionists in Corinth. What's in the letter could bring down an empire. The Romans hire a former legionary, a solitary man-at-arms named Telamon to intercept the letter and destroy the courier. But once he meets the courier, Telamon experiences an extraordinary conversion.
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Christian Perspective
- By Scott Sengbush on 04-16-21
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The Name of the Rose
- By: Umberto Eco, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett, Neville Jason, Nicholas Rowe
- Length: 21 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. But his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths that take place in seven days and nights of apocalyptic terror. Brother William turns detective, and a uniquely deft one at that. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon-- all sharpened to a glistening edge by his wry humor and ferocious curiosity.
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The meaning of the mystery & mystery of meaning
- By Ryan on 02-14-14
By: Umberto Eco, and others
What listeners say about Count Belisarius
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- Darwin8u
- 12-18-13
Procopius can keep his cuckolded history
I love the story of Belisarius. Did Robert Graves abuse history in writing this? I certainly hope so. By the end, however, I didn't really care if Belisarius was as good as Graves made him out to be, if the narrator, Eugenius, (Belisarius' wife Antonia's manservant ) is unreliable, or if Antonia slept with one man or many after marrying this 'Last Great Roman'. Graves bends this story into his own parable about power, corruption, honor and ingenuity. Other generals and the emperor Justinian serve as counter-examples of Belisaurius and also reflect the time he lived. The book wasn't perfect, but it was a great book about a near perfect man.
'Count Belisarius' does make me want to dig deeper into Procopius' History of the Wars of Justinian and The Secret History. I think the brilliance of writers like Robert Graves and Hilary Mantel is there ability (through historical fiction) to capture something MORE than history. Much of Belisarius' life is lost. What is known is known through histories that were written with their own agenda and perspective. Graves novel gives us room to imagine a world that may not be accurate, but is an idealized version of what we WANT to believe we are capable. With the void of the past containing almost an infinite number of possibilities, it is reasonable to want to find pure motives and heroics in those figures of the past. Procopius can keep his cuckolded history, I'll take Grave's virtuous fiction any day.
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- Jefferson
- 02-26-14
A Eunuch Tells It (mostly) Like It Was
Can you resist a novel by Robert Graves, the author of I, Claudius (1934), about Belisarius (500-565 AD), arguably the greatest general in history, a man who used his intelligence, courage, creativity, and leadership to preserve and expand the troubled Byzantine Empire in campaigns against the Persians in the East, the Vandals in North Africa, the Goths in Italy, and the Bulgarian Huns right around Constantinople, a man who (according to Edward Gibbon but not Graves) loved his wife too much, a man who reacted with either superhuman or sub-human patience to the increasingly hateful treatment of his Emperor Justinian?
The first person narrator of Count Belisarius (1938) is the eunuch Eugenius: "I, the author of this Greek work, am a person of little importance, a mere domestic; but I spent nearly my whole life in the service of Antonina, wife to this same Belisarius, and what I write you must credit." Eugenius is writing this biography "in extreme old age at Constantinople in the year of our Lord 571." He is a witty, sympathetic, and usually but not always reliable narrator.
Like I, Claudius, Count Belisarius is a vividly realized historical novel in which the past comes fully alive, for Graves expresses historically accurate world views of the people in the eras about which he writes, and he incorporates so many interesting and authentic seeming details of their past lives. We learn, for example, about the rival sects of early Christianity that fought over things like the mortal and or divine nature of Jesus. At the same time, the old pagan gods were still lurking behind the newly dominant Christian religion, and Eugenius is accepts some witchcraft and debunks ersatz "holy" relics. He also explains things like why there are so many Johns in the world and how it felt to be a eunuch and about the entertainment of the hippodrome, divided between green and blue charioteer factions whose rivalries spilled into every sphere of public and private life and threatened the very Empire. As Eugenius ranges from Belisarius' boyhood through his 65th year, each chapter has at least one great set piece, among them the clever rescue of a tax collector from a band of thugs, a feast hosted by a pompous and nostalgic Roman, and the comical hunt for a killer whale. And of course, pacifist though he is, Eugenius, who served his mistress as she accompanied Belisarius on most of his campaigns, recounts suspenseful ambushes, sieges, ruses, rescues, full-scale battles, and so on, each one set in a different martial, political, and social context, including practical information like training, discipline, morale, transport, supply, communication, and luck.
Belisarius seems to have been both a consummate general and a good man. His great innovation was in training up a new cavalry that combined the heavy shock lancers of the Goths with the light skirmishing archers of the Huns. Interestingly, the more military success he achieved, the more suspicious and jealous his Emperor Justinian became. Theirs was an intriguing relationship! Justinian would send Belisarius out to do something impossible without anywhere near enough troops or money, tell him to succeed, sabotage him with inferior and disobedient generals or with corrupt suppliers, hope for him to fail, refuse to appropriately acknowledge his unexpected success, suspect of him of disloyalty in proportion to that success, recall him to Constantinople to chastise him before he could solidify the Empire's hold on the newly re-acquired territory, blame him for any subsequent problems stemming from his premature withdrawal, and so on. Eugenius acknowledges the difficulty in understanding Belisarius' extraordinary patience and submission, conjecturing that he may have pitied Justinian for not knowing how to live like a Christian, and that he lived his life by a strict belief in obedience, a key to military success, while Justinian lived without knowing what to make of a truly good person, living as he did among sinful people. Despite Belisarius coming off as a virtuous hero, Eugenius admits that his amazing military successes led to destruction, poverty, suffering, and death in North Africa and Italy, partly because of his submission to the increasingly insecure, impractical, and greedy Justinian. Perhaps Belisarius' greatest flaw was not, as Gibbon puts it, uxoriousness, but rather his constant loyalty to a bad emperor.
Another great relationship in the novel is between Belisarius and his wife Antonina. They first met as teenagers when he was an innocent aristocrat, and she was a charioteer entertainer (i.e., a gymnast-dancer-prostitute). Years later she would join him on his campaigns, exchanging bawdy jests with the soldiers, managing catapults, and generally being a solid and yet often refreshingly independent support for the general. While Gibbon morbidly revels in Antonina's amoral, scheming, and manipulative nature, (eagerly relying on Procopius' Secret History, which, according to Eugenius, is a vindictive mix of twisted truths and lies), Graves follows his own inclination, though Eugenius does wax coy a few times when touching fraught matters like Antonina's relationship with Belisarius and their adopted son Theodisius.
The reader Laurence Kennedy is a perfect Eugenius, sounding like an educated, refined, and humane (British) man, with just the right slight hint of effeminacy without camping it up. And all of his other characters sound spot on, from his devious, eunuch chamberlain-general Narses (recalling a cross-dressing Elmer Fudd) to his increasingly snide and abhorrent Justinian. And he renders the Empress Theodora and her bosom buddy Antonina suitably shrewd, funny, and formidable.
Anyone interested in the Byzantine Empire, Robert Graves, military history, and literary historical fiction peopled with compelling, complex, and believable characters should find much pleasure in Count Belisarius.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Kelly Donoghue
- 10-22-17
GOT BETTER AS IT WENT
My two older teens just raved about this book so my husband and I got it for a cross country trip. I was thoroughly surprised they loved it so much at first. It seems like a long tedious history lesson but we were both glad we stuck with it. It was fascinating the things people of that time were embroiled in, namely whether Jesus was a part of the trinity or not. also we had no idea the way the chariot races divided the populace. Overall it's a reminder what a truly noble man is capable of. The narration was beyond top notch!
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7 people found this helpful
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- Rollin
- 10-28-13
Drawn out and tiresome narration
Would you try another book from Robert Graves and/or Laurence Kennedy?
I love historical fiction and especially loved I Claudius, by Graves, which is why I tried this book. But I was greatly disappointed by the plot. Well, there really isn't a plot: it's a drawn out memoir which takes a long time to take off. The exasperating and humdrum narration of Laurence Kennedy didn't help.
What do you think your next listen will be?
I'll try another book by Graves, if I can find one not narrated by Kennedy.
Would you be willing to try another one of Laurence Kennedy’s performances?
I don't think so.
Any additional comments?
This book is for listeners very interested in daily life and political ins and outs of the late Roman Empire in the East.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Loren
- 01-26-19
uhhhhhgggg
This story is packed full of anachronisms and poor explanations of the late antiquity, with a topping of poor pronunciation to top
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jeff R
- 12-19-19
The worst
This may be the most boring book I've ever finished. None of the characters is anything more than two dimensional, and the author does not give a sense of the times. Special scorn is reserved for the narrator: his views are anachronistic (rooted in a 20th century moralism and view of history) and his viewpoint as Belisarius's wife's personal slave both limits descriptions of war to WIkipedia summaries, and makes one wonders how he can give the occasional insights into what i happening in the courts of foreign kings.
Just as with Livia in I, Claudius, every historical rumor was taken at apparent face value in the pursuit of making Antonina look like a Machiavellian schemer who held the real power behind the scenes It's silly, sexist, and constantly stretches believability.
I was somewhat familiar with the time period from the History of Byzantium podcast. While that is (mostly) a summative, factual look at the same people, ultimately I think anybody would find it far more engaging than this.
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- Rogelio
- 04-23-21
cheeky and fun
I was shocked when i found a book on my favorite hero. Only to discover a well written story with a very immersive universe. Characters of every sort filled with mindsets and beliefs. I cant even do this book justice with my simple vocabulary and the so many facets to the story my favorite the military perspectives.
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- Pavel C.
- 02-16-17
Very inspiring book.
One of the best life story. Maybe the best. Narration is also highly profesional and entertaining.
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- Dan
- 11-09-16
An inspiring book. It takes time to like.
A book I would want to return to. It inspires thoughts about loyalty, and moral life.
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- Peter
- 07-26-16
Brilliant
Beautifully written, brilliantly read.
If Graves' account is historically accurate, then Belisarius was truly a noble man.
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