Symposium Book

I first stumbled upon this book at a public library, in Australia, in the history section. This proved rather misleading, as this book does not have an ounce of historical fact in it. Divine Carnage is little more than a silly gore porn book, relentlessly exaggerating the negative aspects of Roman history and society in ludicrous ways. Despite its lack of educational value, the book has a strong hilarity factor if you are strong enough to cope with the constant gore and ridiculous sexual perversions the authors describe in great detail. Some passages are so outlandish that you'll find yourself shaking with barely supressed laughter. Here is one of my favourite passages:

"The animal used most frequently in the arena was the legendary Libyan lion: the most magnificent specimens of this mutant species grew to eleven feet in length, with enormous paws armed with razorsharp claws of saber-size dimensions; even their engorged testicles were as large as a man's head. The Libyan lion was the ultimate killing machine, especially if deprived of its usual diet: in the wild, on the then-fertile terrain of the Idehan Marzuq, it could lay waste to two hundred wildebeests and ostriches in one sitting. Armies of slaves were expended to capture those majestic beasts - they were impervious to tranquilizer arrows, and the only way to subdue them was for a particularly handsome slave to present his shapely, exposed anus to the lion's mighty sexual apparatus; then, once the act of copulation (which invariably proved terminal for the unfortunate slave, due to unsustainable blood loss) reached its critical point and the lion was momentarily distracted, a gang of a hundred or more whooping slaves would wrestle the lion to the ground and throw a net over it."

The authors seem to have an unhealthy obsession with sodomy as the book is rife with descriptions of the act. They even claim that Caligula's sister Drusilla succumbed to excessive anal penetration. To those who've seen the 1976 crap-piece "Caligula", you may see striking similarities between this book and the film and I believe the authors did little more than plagiarise ideas and scenes from it. The infamous head-cutting machine is referred to as fact in Divine Carnage, which should set off a few warning bells in the historically-minded or those who've seen the film.

It is best to read this book as a comedy. It's ridiculous, over the top, and written in such ludicrously hyperbolic tones that it'll provide quite a few hearty laughs. I wouldn't recommend it to the gullible or the sensitive. The latter would be shocked by all the gore and sexual violence.