first impression on syme's 'roman revolution'

I spent over two hours in the allergist's office today, mostly sitting around waiting for reactions to various "oral challenge" doses, long enough to read the Introduction and first chapters of The Roman Revolution.

Of course I'd read it in the past. But like so many books I have forgotten, I had to start fresh again.  WOW!

Selected pages of some of these chapters, though not the Preface, can be found at Google Books, otherwise copyrighted.  The 2002 reprint.

In the Reference section of the Google book, there are various links including a Bryn Mawr Review about another book, a review which nonetheless devotes several paragraphs to Syme the person and "The Roman Revolution."

After having read so many biographies of the central characters of the era, it is a welcome change for me that Syme concentrates on the "the composition of oligarchy of the government [that] emerges as the dominant theme of political history,  [the] binding link between the Republic and the Empire… "   And he announces, "[The] noble houses of Rome and the principal allies of the various political leaders enter into their own at last."  (from the Preface)

I'm also pleased about his sober assessment of Augustus, shorn of panegyrics, which I share.  He writes that there are no separate persons of 'Octavianus the Triumvir' and 'Augustus the Princeps' and cites Julian who classified Augustus as a chameleon.  "Color changed, but not substance."

JSTOR has several reviews, best searched as "syme"(author) AND roman revolution (title)"

Subscribers of The New York Review of Books can read Glen Bowersock's 1980 article about Syme, The Emperor of Roman History, Selected Books by Ronald Syme Currently in Print.

This book will be an adventure!