PositiveThe Christian Science MonitorCarter\'s book is unapologetically brutal; creatures both vile and virtuous are always vulnerable to deaths that are described in vivid detail, and the cruel English winters of the late 1940s are equally violent. But underneath the vying savagery and sentimentality, Carter tells a lovely tale fit to stand alongside animal-world classics such as Watership Down and The Wind in the Willows.
Ferdinand Addis
MixedThe Christian Science MonitorIn many ways, it reads more like a slightly modernized and extended version of Livy than an actual work of what we would consider modern, serious history ... With no factual basis at all, he tells us about the emperor Elagabalus ... It’s all very enjoyably cinematic, provided you remember that movies deal in make-believe ... The Eternal City proceeds in leaps and pauses all the way through the best stories of Rome’s history ... Addis says his book is an attempt \'to give Rome meaning,\' and he very wisely notes that this is always the aim of the city’s historians, however self-centered it inevitably turns out to be ... This is at once insightful and an obvious dodge, and readers of The Eternal City will be left wondering if it can possibly justify this more-than-600-page mélange of folklore, fiction, and fact.
