The Life of Dion

By: Cornelius Nepos, John Selby Watson - translator

Narrated by: Andrea Giordani

How could a man be reviled, even assassinated, during his own life, and yet have people's opinion of him change after his death? Explore the life of Dion, a wealthy Syracusian aristocrat of great learning whose life brutally ended on a feast-day. How could a man of acclaimed courteous temperment be accused of such horrible crimes?

Public Domain (P)2018 Museum Audiobooks

Was this recorded 30 minutes before it was due?

I picked this up along with a few other ancient stories. I figured I would never get around to reading them so I would just listen to them, and I was shocked by how bad they edited and performed a 16-minute book. I get it, this is probably someone translating the text as they read it... At least I hope it is. That being said this is the absolute worst editing/recording/performing I have ever heard.

In all fairness, this may not be Andrea Giordani's fault, they may have just not edited what she performed and then that is on Museum Audiobooks...

The voice at first made me think it was Microsoft Word reading a book, but she caught her rhythm. Then she would stop three or more times and REREAD the same sentence (stopping at different points to reread again) with a slightly different pronunciation. I get it, it takes a few reads to translate something (I still hope you are at least doing that and not making this mess with something already in English)... oh god I just realized it was translated by someone else so it must have been in English.

The most awesomely horrible part is she belches in the middle of reading and they left it in... and it isn't a comedy act, it is supposed to be a serious reading of a translated story. Seriously a high schooler could do better in their mother's basement. Does Audible do any sort of quality control? I suspect not if this gets through.

It is only a 16-minute audio file. I record and cut videos longer than this for youtube and it literally would take an editor less than 15 minutes to cut out the re-reading and make it sound 100 times better.

Oh and I just found that this isn't actually a full book, the full book is Cornelius Nepos: Three LIves -- Alcibiades, Dion, Atticus, so they basically grabbed a few chapters out of a book...

Dang, now I have to go back and check out the other books I Have from "Museum Audiobooks".