What I’m Reading: The Middle Sea
I thoroughly enjoyed Norwich’s ‘A Short History of Byzantium’, so I thought I’d pick this one up for a little light reading. I will, unfortunately, not be travelling down to the Mediterranean this year due to having a new baby, so reading about the bloody history of Mare Nostrum seemed like an enjoyable way to compensate.
The book touches on all the big players – Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantine Greeks, Normans, Turks, Ventians, and the English. What I found fascinating was the changing importance of the sea – it started as a perfect place for civilization to flourish, was the pivot of the world for a good bit of history, became a bloody battleground between East and West, turned backwater as the Atlantic and the Americas were opened, and is now a place were germans and english get amazing sunburns. Although that last part was left out of the book.
I was especially fascinated by the history of Venice – I must admit that I was ignorant of the importance that the most Serene Republic had on world events for the last Millenium, due to Venice turning into a soggy, smelly Disneyland in the latter half of the 20th century. Luckily Norwich appears to have written an entire book on just this subject, which I will pick up before I (finally) visit the city.
The Med is actually the perfect place for me to vacation. I can get up in the morning, enjoy a warm (but not stinking, texas style humid) breeze, have an espresso (which gets better the closer you get to the sea) and go see an ancient church or medieval walled city or a leathered, Italian victim of extreme plastic surgery. In the afternoon I can join the aforementioned sunburned brits at the beach, where I can drink a beer and then swim in the clear blue water. I can then enjoy a good seafood dinner while staring in frank astonishment at the british and their sunburns. It’s like they figure ‘Well I only get sun once a year, so might as well live it up, yeah?”.
