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Paul Bryant's Reviews > Caligula: Divine Carnage: Atrocities of the Roman Emperors
Caligula: Divine Carnage: Atrocities of the Roman Emperors
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by
** Warning – contains distasteful material, unfit for most people**
This is a very (very) silly torture-porn book which can only be recommened to fans of Deathgasm (Jason Howden, 2015) or Centuries of Torment by the band Cannibal Corpse (2008). They would love it.
What was I doing reading it? Funny you should ask – I was asking myself the same question. I thought – you, yes, you - reader of Ulysses and Winnie the Pooh, are now reading Caligula Divine Carnage, subtitle : Atrocities of the Roman Emperors.
Explain!
Well, you see, I recently read My Lives by ubersophisticate man of the world Edmund White, a guy who knows how to string a sentence together. In that book he mentions that this other guy has written his biography and the other guy is Stephen Barber. When I checked out Stephen Barber on Goodreads I found he'd also written this one.
I was intrigued.
Of course it could be there's two Stephen Barbers. It wouldn't be the first time Goodreads has concertinered two people with the same name. (Or should that be concertina'd? But I don't like that apostrophe. It makes me uneasy.) Googling didn't help, so until I'm told otherwise I think this is the same Stephen Barber who wrote The Burning World, a biography of Edmund White.
In which case, I have a message for Edmund :
You really should read this one. Do you really want this guy writing your life? I think not!
In his note on sources Stephen dismisses the tedious standards to which historical works are held in a rather grand manner:
It would require the most omniscient oracle to say what was authentic
Meaning – for the purposes of this book I've decided to believe only the most insanely lurid fantasies spun around these mad Roman emperors by the sadistic pornographers of the last two thousand years.
I don't boggle easily but I was all a-boggle on the very first page of the foreword. We are discussing Tiberius, the emperor prior to Caligula :
Not content with enticing mullet to nibble his crumb-coated genitals as he reclined in the tepid rock pools
A mullet:
Well, I tried this once and really the crumbs just dissolve in the water before the mullet get interested, so frankly I don't believe Emperor Tiberius did any such thing. More like he said he'd like to try it. Now, on the second page of the foreword we have this, an early description of the Brazilian wax :
Domitian meanwhile lusted after prostitutes and courtesans without surcease, and delighted in depilating their succulent pubic mounds by hand-held tweezers before penetration.
I don't believe this one either – it would take hours and I think one's ardour would be considerably diminished long before any serious depilation had been achieved.
I was glad to read that even Emperors didn't get everything they wished for:
Although Tiberius's last wish had been that one of his most well endowed slaves should bugger his corpse, nobody could be found who was prepared to do so, despite considerable financial incentives.
As you see, the torture porn is laced with a little understated wit on occasion.
So this book is a list of repetitive horrors and maimings and slaughterings inflicted on all and sundry by Caligula, Commodus and Heliogabalus, three of the the four truly crazy Emperors. But it's so over the top that not only can the top no longer be seen but it's now only a distant memory to this book. I just didn't believe any of it. E.g.
A special miniature amphitheatre was erected where the plebeian scum could for a small fee sit and watch their Emperor bugger his sister on a stage of solid gold.
Sorry, just no. No he didn't. Stop writing this stuff, Stephen Barber. Really. Even if it's just for money. Stop metaphorically buggering these corpses!
Okay - some light relief: which pop song not only uses the word plebeian but rhymes it too?
(view spoiler)
****
Update :
Note on Stephen Barber : Googling now does help, and confirms that it's the same guy, who clearly is a professor of art history at Kingston School of Art in London by day, and a scurrilous compiler of pornohistory by night. Also, his Edmund White biography was published in 1999, two years before Caligula, and from what the Amazon reviews say it's a serious, sensible and excellent work.
This is a very (very) silly torture-porn book which can only be recommened to fans of Deathgasm (Jason Howden, 2015) or Centuries of Torment by the band Cannibal Corpse (2008). They would love it.
What was I doing reading it? Funny you should ask – I was asking myself the same question. I thought – you, yes, you - reader of Ulysses and Winnie the Pooh, are now reading Caligula Divine Carnage, subtitle : Atrocities of the Roman Emperors.
Explain!
Well, you see, I recently read My Lives by ubersophisticate man of the world Edmund White, a guy who knows how to string a sentence together. In that book he mentions that this other guy has written his biography and the other guy is Stephen Barber. When I checked out Stephen Barber on Goodreads I found he'd also written this one.
I was intrigued.
Of course it could be there's two Stephen Barbers. It wouldn't be the first time Goodreads has concertinered two people with the same name. (Or should that be concertina'd? But I don't like that apostrophe. It makes me uneasy.) Googling didn't help, so until I'm told otherwise I think this is the same Stephen Barber who wrote The Burning World, a biography of Edmund White.
In which case, I have a message for Edmund :
You really should read this one. Do you really want this guy writing your life? I think not!
In his note on sources Stephen dismisses the tedious standards to which historical works are held in a rather grand manner:
It would require the most omniscient oracle to say what was authentic
Meaning – for the purposes of this book I've decided to believe only the most insanely lurid fantasies spun around these mad Roman emperors by the sadistic pornographers of the last two thousand years.
I don't boggle easily but I was all a-boggle on the very first page of the foreword. We are discussing Tiberius, the emperor prior to Caligula :
Not content with enticing mullet to nibble his crumb-coated genitals as he reclined in the tepid rock pools
A mullet:
Well, I tried this once and really the crumbs just dissolve in the water before the mullet get interested, so frankly I don't believe Emperor Tiberius did any such thing. More like he said he'd like to try it. Now, on the second page of the foreword we have this, an early description of the Brazilian wax :
Domitian meanwhile lusted after prostitutes and courtesans without surcease, and delighted in depilating their succulent pubic mounds by hand-held tweezers before penetration.
I don't believe this one either – it would take hours and I think one's ardour would be considerably diminished long before any serious depilation had been achieved.
I was glad to read that even Emperors didn't get everything they wished for:
Although Tiberius's last wish had been that one of his most well endowed slaves should bugger his corpse, nobody could be found who was prepared to do so, despite considerable financial incentives.
As you see, the torture porn is laced with a little understated wit on occasion.
So this book is a list of repetitive horrors and maimings and slaughterings inflicted on all and sundry by Caligula, Commodus and Heliogabalus, three of the the four truly crazy Emperors. But it's so over the top that not only can the top no longer be seen but it's now only a distant memory to this book. I just didn't believe any of it. E.g.
A special miniature amphitheatre was erected where the plebeian scum could for a small fee sit and watch their Emperor bugger his sister on a stage of solid gold.
Sorry, just no. No he didn't. Stop writing this stuff, Stephen Barber. Really. Even if it's just for money. Stop metaphorically buggering these corpses!
Okay - some light relief: which pop song not only uses the word plebeian but rhymes it too?
(view spoiler)
****
Update :
Note on Stephen Barber : Googling now does help, and confirms that it's the same guy, who clearly is a professor of art history at Kingston School of Art in London by day, and a scurrilous compiler of pornohistory by night. Also, his Edmund White biography was published in 1999, two years before Caligula, and from what the Amazon reviews say it's a serious, sensible and excellent work.
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Reading Progress
March 30, 2012
–
Started Reading
March 30, 2012
– Shelved
March 31, 2012
– Shelved as:
verysleazyfun
March 31, 2012
–
Finished Reading
June 5, 2019
– Shelved as:
rome
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yeah, that bad boy cross dressing sheep painting Nero
One of the very few movies I've ever walked out on was the Caligula of the early 80s. Wiki says Roger Ebert also walked out on it. I believe I would walk out on this book. I mean, where's the plot? Buggery and mullets do not a plot make, as Shakespeare almost certainly said.
There is indeed no plot. But here we might recall Gibbon's lugubrious judgement that history is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. What is human history but a vast congregation of character and incident in search of a decent plot? Was it Henry Ford who added that history was nothing but one damned thing after another? I have a copy of the uncut (as it were) Caligula movie but haven't got up the nerve to watch it yet.
It's truly dire.History may be plotless; books should not be. Even history books are supposed to have the benefit of an Organizing Mind to show us why one damned thing came after the other.
On a completely different note, I see you're reading Forty Years On. Having finally finished Honest To God, I will be interested to see what the CofE establishment made of it over the years.
yes, me too; I will get to that one tomorrow as I'm off work for a couple of days, it's half term holidays...nice.
I saw the unrated Caligula a few years ago and LMAO through the entire thing. Adorable porny trash.
Cannibal Corpse?!Why Paul, I hardly knew ye. ;-)
I can't say I'm a fan. I lean more towards The Civil Wars myself.
I'm confused. I always thought a 'mullet' was a type of hairstyle?! I've listened to the song that rhymes plebeian many times and could even hum the tune when I read the words but could not place what it was until I reached for my google. Thanks for bringing such an interesting fact out from my unconscious mind.
I own and treasure this delightful volume. It is entirely tongue-in-cheek, although I'm not prepared to say what kind of cheek. Whether written for bucks and/or a lark, it does not matter; it stoops to its vile gutter with rakish grace, and the pleasure it takes in its gross deceits is infectious. As Casanova said, we avenge intellect when we dupe a fool -- all the more so when the fool is oneself.
well, as my old granny said, it takes all sorts to make a world. Are we agreed then that this Stephen barber is indeed the biographer of Mr White?
Apropos of how false this book is, in this interview, http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/terror..., Barber says about his book Annihilation Zones, which proposes that "Stalin sodomized Hitler in a secret meeting": [It] came out of my interest in the Situationist art movement and was intended as a semi-fictional book (a corrosive kind of mutant and shifting amalgam between non-fiction and fiction, designed to disorient the reader — or ‘terrorize’ the reader, as 3:AM’s Richard Marshall wrote...."So my characterizing the book as a lark or joke is probably too restrictive a categorization. It certainly has the aspect of a prank, but this is territory Barber evidently inhabits and he must find it interesting for a variety of reasons.
I think public perception comes from Robert Graves. Plus all the Roman historians had it in for Caligula.
How strange that we have to police the news now for the Situationalist art form of semi-fiction. I'm not sure I enjoy it. I do, indeed, feel terrorized. I'll probably skip it in book form.
Little wrote: "How strange that we have to police the news now for the Situationalist art form of semi-fiction. I'm not sure I enjoy it. I do, indeed, feel terrorized. I'll probably skip it in book form."The analogue with "alternative facts" in the current political context did occur to me! But fiction is "alternative facts", too, and it would be grossly unfair to Barber to align his artistic project in any way with the vicious mendacity of modern politics.
i hate torture-porn book or pointless super gore but watch me read this one day and hate myself for it.
I shan't be reading this book due to your hilarious review, so thanks for writing it!
ah thanks for reminding me of it - a hilarious book. I might reread it.
hey Paul, who was the fourth? the one who was dancing about while rome burned? or that one empress with a glenn-close-in-fatal-attraction type appeal? color me curious.