Quo Vadis
Ratings38
Average rating3.9
How do you rate a book that you slogged through for two hundred and fifty pages, wanting to quit, hating the sappiness of the love story, cringing at the thou-thine-ye vocabulary of the characters' conversations...and then, completely unexpectedly, falling in love with the text for the last two hundred pages, flipping pages like you are reading a bestseller, fascinated with the descriptions of Nero's Rome, awestruck at the sacrifice and love the characters show for abominable people?
I settled on four stars.
The heart of the story is the love-at-first-sight romance of Vinicius, a haughty centurian, and Ligia, a captive princess, in the Rome run by the monster Nero. These are terrible times for the poor, the slaves, Christians...just about everyone except Nero and his rich friends, who say and do anything that comes into their minds, who care nothing about anyone except themselves, heedlessly blaming others for their own misdeeds, (literally) throwing people to the lions. Vinicius was one of these people, a friend of Nero, oblivious to anything except personal pleasure, and it was only after he met Ligia and her Christian friends that he began to change into a human with character and empathy and love.
Christianity is heavily salted into the story, and you may not be able to eat of the tale because of that, and I am not denying that much of this may feel as if it were written by a person trying to convert the world to a Christian philosophy. And maybe that is so. Still the juxtaposition of the Christian folks in the story next to Nero and his cronies—especially as I read while recalling of some of the worst of the last four years of leadership in America—well, it's wildly, manically refreshing.
A powerful romantic tragedy set during the persecution of Emperor Nero. It's a bit too long but a fascinating page-turner with some profound themes.
It is obvious that Henryk Sienkiewicz was an expert first century Rome. The city and the monarchy come alive in Quo Vadis in an amazingly tangible way. Even though not all the events are historically accurate, I don't see how a better job could be done of recreating the time and place.
The description of the Roman circus with its gladiators and Christian massacres is the strongest section of the book. It is awful. I hadn't thought more than superficially about what went on in the ampitheatres but after reading this, it is clear to me that any complaining about how morals are worse now than ever can easily be answered by referring to the Romans. Two thousand years ago, shortly after the death of Christ, humanity had already plumbed the depths of depravity.
How does a society get to the point where the slaughter and violation of women and children whose only crime is their religion is viewed as acceptable entertainment? Gladiators are vaguely comprehensible to me. I can see how a people that prizes strength and valor in war could come to idolize it to the point of recreating it artificially in games; it's sick but understandable. But when it comes to releasing men, women and children to be torn apart by animals while thousands of onlookers enjoy the spectical, it is hard to see how that can be justified in any context. It is strange that the famous philosophers and historians of Rome weren't more vocal in condemning the arena. Was life really so little valued? Are people really so easily blinded by their surroundings?
Outside the descriptions of damnatio ad bestias, Quo Vadis has its moments but it repeatedly comes close to greatness without ever really reaching it. The primary focus of the plot, the love story between Marcus Vinicius and Ligia, is melodramatic and sometimes so overdone that it is almost nauseating. At other times in the story there is compelling and real relationship there, but it is overshadowed by the prevailing sappiness.
Early Christians are portrayed as the embodiment of “turn the other cheek” and “lambs to the slaughter,” completely unwilling, even when able, to defend themselves. Maybe that's how they were, I don't know. Either way, it makes for a frustrating story.
Thinking about the book while writing this review makes me realize that Quo Vadis is impressive for the amount of information it conveys about Rome, Nero and the environment of early Christianity. Maybe it deserves another star, but I didn't read it for the history, I read it for the story and the story is definitely only 3 stars.