Review by nahcoofthecake

Two programs about ancient Rome's neighbors, competitors and subject peoples. It mainly focuses on culture and technology. It presents information that is highly accurate, and also usually overlooked in history textbooks.

Not only is the content insightful and not stuff that's already common knowledge, it's just plain good history. The claims aren't overstated ("The Celts invented everything and we have absolute proof!") or sensational, or unnecessarily opaque and mysterious, like "How did they build the pyramids? Nobody knows!" (in fact we have pretty detailed knowledge of how they were built). I am a professional historian (well, PhD candidate) and I can recommend these programs for high-school or even college-level classrooms without reservation. The second program, "The Brainy Barbarians," is especially good.

Terry Jones editorializes a bit about the Romans, but with all the fawning over them in conventional histories, I think this will do more good than harm for most viewers. Besides which, it's honest editorializing--you can easily tell when he's presenting interpretations or opinions, and when he's presenting facts.

And it's all pretty entertaining and well-presented, too.

K Hemmat