Empires of Trust

How Rome Built - and America Is Building - a New World

By: Thomas F. Madden

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

In Empires of Trust, Professor Thomas F. Madden explores surprising parallels between the Roman and American republics.

By making friends of enemies and demonstrating a commitment to fairness, the two republics - both "reluctant" yet unquestioned super-powers - built empires based on trust. Madden also includes vital lessons from the Roman Republic's 100-year struggle with "terrorism."

©2008 Thomas F. Madden (P)2008 Recorded Books,LLC

Power, advocacy and half-truths

Three years ago I listened to the author's Modern Scholar lecture on early Christianity. On that basis I bought this book. Maybe I would hear that lecture with different ears now, but at the time I thought he was focused on facts.

I agree with the reviewer who said some correction in perspective on America is needed. But do it through facts, not through oversimplification and slip-sliding over inconvenient truths. I just have room here for a couple of examples.

First, re Judah Maccabee, Madden seemed to want to paint him as a friend of the Empire, so since he's painting Hellenized Jews as the good Jews, friends of the Empire, he didn't mention that Judah Maccabee's revolt was in large part a civil war against the radical Hellenizers among the Jews and he didn't go so easy on the moderate Hellenizers, either.

Second, re Jesus, Madden avoided the fact that to the Romans he was just another one of those Jewish Messiah figures--not in this case a military leader--but if, as Madden says, the main threat to the Empire was religious insurrection, then it would be him & others like him the Romans and their Hellenized friends among the Jews especially wanted to execute during those tumultuous years. Not so consistent with who were the good guys according to Madden!

I read a quote from Madden in a Modern Scholar catalog to the effect that knowing the past will help you not to repeat it, but the reverse is not true--current events do not help in explaining the past. If you retroject them back into the past you will get distortions. I think Madden breaks his own rule, and anyway I think it's too easy to make unpleasant generalities about people his audience loves to hate while cutting them--his audience--slack. He just bends over backward to be an apologist for Rome--and America.

When the author gets to the end and talks about the fall of the Roman Empire, he finally says, It's complicated! Well, it's all complicated. More history, less polemic, please!

What a disappointment

I was expecting a thoughtful analysis, and after a few hours of this empty drivel I bailed.

This really felt like a reverse-engineered apology for the Bush hubris in international policy. I know nothing of the author's intentions or methodology, but the product smacks of strong prejudice and weak research.

Some of it is laughable; most of it is annoying.

All of it is a waste of precious Audible listening time. Keep looking.

Bork, Reagan, and Honest of Rome

The premise of this work I found very appealing. A conservative scholar "comes out of his dusty attic" to demonstrate the true parallels between Rome and America, while debunking the popular comparisons. I am no scholar, but I cannot imagine what university allows this man to teach its students. His professorship must be fully endowed by the Cato Institute or some Coors fund. Instead of a scholarly corrective, this book does a cut-and-paste historical comparison that omits small episodes and intermediations like the Roman plebeian class wars, the Grachus brothers, the contemporary indictments of the Roman Senate, war slavery, the Mexican American war, the Indian wars, the Philippines, the industrial revolution, and on and on. The selectivity and hazy lens of his scholarship is on a par with the violent, decadent HBO version of Rome he calumniates, substituting instead a Rome and America through the misty eyes of Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, and Robert Bork. All honest farmers who only long to be left alone to raise their families and worship their gods, yet are tragically forced to kill, enslave, and extend empires, just to be safe. The most hilarious anachronism is his parallel between Roman and American religion. The Romans were tolerant "except of atheism." He does not mention that the Romans considered monotheism, including Christianity, to be "atheism." Instead, he segues into a description of the horrors of Dionysian rituals that is obviously meant to invoke rock concerts and gay discos. I am not a scholar. I am not a liberal. I admire classicists and many conservative intellectuals. But anyone who buys this work should be advised that they are getting a highly political, anachronistic, and simplified interpretation from the far right think tanks, a work perfect for home-schooling evangelicals who must explain "Rome" and "Empire" to their American children.