Life in Ancient Rome
by Kaufman, William

Publisher:  Dover Publications, Incorporated,
ISBN:  0486297675

The Dover coloring book, Life in Ancient Rome, illustrated by John Green, with text by William Kaufman, contains forty-five pages to color. It starts, not with Romulus and the legendary founding of Rome, but with Marius, Sulla, and the Social Wars. Then come the men involved in the First Triumvirate, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey, followed by Cicero and the Julio-Claudian emperors. Not a bad assortment of leaders to characterize Roman history. After the leaders, great and terrible, is the eruption of Vesuvius during Titus' reign, followed by the construction of the Colosseum.

From chronological events, the pages shift to permanent components of Roman life, consuls, lictors, praetors, farm work, leisure, feasts, military life, highway construction, architecture, medicine, education, crafts, commerce, religion, entertainment, and finally, literature. These are good, representative topics, explained with detail. Instead of characterizing Tiberius as simply a sadist, Kaufman points to his administrative competence, as well. Ironically, Nero is depicted twice playing his lyre while Rome burns, although the accompanying text debunks this myth.

Doing the Greeks one better could be the theme behind the technological and arts related coloring pages. For instance, Kaufman explains the firmer cement and web-shaped brick allowed Romans to erect enduring arches where the Greeks had less sturdy lintels. Instead of idealized sculpture, realism crept into the Roman model, and uniformly shaped ceramic tiles permitted exquisite artwork.

My coloring book experience ended when I was six, so I can't tell for sure whether those using this book would actually use it for coloring. There is so much detail I wouldn't know where to set my crayon and first grade would not be a fitting time to use this book. Real Roman history is full of sex and violence. Even this coloring book deals with such topics, so the age at which one first uses it should coincide with whatever age is deemed old enough to handle the good and the bad, the noble and the sadistic.

As Kaufman writes:

"To be sure, contradictions leap off every page of Roman history: the abysmal cruelty of its arenas and the soaring grace of its temples, the excesses of its emperors and the eloquence of its lawmakers, the ugliness of its slavery and the beauty of its poetry, the blight of its wars and the benefactions of its roads and aqueducts."

N.S. Gill, your Guide for Ancient/Classical History