10 Books About the Roman Empire
The Roman Empire fell thousands of years ago, but today it seems to be the only thing on everyone’s mind. With the wealth of information available, here’s your guide to the books you should read about the Roman Empire, perfect for readers new to the subject and professionals alike.
The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind.
Pax is a captivating narrative history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland shows ancient Rome in all its glory: Nero’s downfall, the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii, the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s Wall, the conquests of Trajan. Vividly sketching the lives of Romans both ordinary and spectacular, from slaves to emperors, Holland shows that Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.
A stunning portrait of Rome’s glory days, this is the epic history of the Pax Romana.
The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. Beginning as a small city-state in central Italy, Rome gradually expanded into a wider world filled with petty tyrants, barbarian chieftains, and despotic kings. Through the centuries, Rome’s model of cooperative and participatory government remained remarkably durable and unmatched in the history of the ancient world.
In 146 BC, Rome finally emerged as the strongest power in the Mediterranean. But the very success of the Republic proved to be its undoing. The republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome now ruled: rising economic inequality disrupted traditional ways of life, endemic social and ethnic prejudice led to clashes over citizenship and voting rights, and rampant corruption and ruthless ambition sparked violent political clashes that cracked the once indestructible foundations of the Republic.
Chronicling the years 146-78 BC, The Storm Before the Storm dives headlong into the first generation to face this treacherous new political environment. Abandoning the ancient principles of their forbearers, men like Marius, Sulla, and the Gracchi brothers set dangerous new precedents that would start the Republic on the road to destruction and provide a stark warning about what can happen to a civilization that has lost its way.
The Roman empire was like no other. Stretching from the north of Britain to the Sahara, and from the Atlantic coast to the Euphrates, it imposed peace and prosperity on an unprecedented scale.
Its only true rival lay in the east, where the Parthian and then Persian empires ruled over great cities and the trade routes to mysterious lands beyond. This was the region Alexander the Great had swept through, creating a dream of glory and conquest that tantalized Greeks and Romans alike. Tracing seven centuries of conflict between Rome and Persia, historian Adrian Goldsworthy shows how these two great powers evolved together. Despite their endless clashes, trade between the empires enriched them both, and a mutual respect prevented both Rome and Persia from permanently destroying the other.
Epic in scope, Rome and Persia completely reshapes our understanding of one of the greatest rivalries of world history.
In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean’s premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise.
By the 130s BC, however, Rome’s leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars — and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus.
The death of Rome’s Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.
In Augustine, celebrated historian Robin Lane Fox follows Augustine of Hippo on his journey to the writing of his Confessions. Unbaptized, Augustine indulged in a life of lust before finally confessing and converting. Lane Fox recounts Augustine’s sexual sins, his time in an outlawed heretical sect, and his gradual return to spirituality. Magisterial and beautifully written, Augustine is the authoritative portrait of this colossal figure at his most thoughtful, vulnerable, and profound.
Stretching eighty miles from coast to coast across northern England, Hadrian’s Wall is the largest Roman artifact known today. It is commonly viewed as a defiant barrier, the end of the empire, a place where civilization stopped and barbarism began. In fact, the massive structure remains shrouded in mystery. Was the wall intended to keep out the Picts, who inhabited the North? Or was it merely a symbol of Roman power and wealth? What was life like for soldiers stationed along its expanse? How was the extraordinary structure built — with what technology, skills, and materials?
In Hadrian’s Wall, Adrian Goldsworthy embarks on a historical and archaeological investigation, sifting fact from legend while simultaneously situating the wall in the wider scene of Roman Britain. The result is a concise and enthralling history of a great architectural marvel of the ancient world.
Jenkyns begins with Homer and the birth of epic poetry before exploring the hypnotic poetry of Pindar, Sappho, and others from the Greek dark ages. Later, in Athens’s classical age, Jenkyns shows the radical nature of Sophocles’s choice to portray Ajax as a psychologically wounded warrior, how Aeschylus developed tragedy, and how Herodotus, in “inventing history,” brought to narrative an epic and tragic quality. We meet the strikingly modern figure of Virgil, struggling to mirror epic art in an age of empire, and experience the love poems of Catullus, who imbued verse with obsessive passion as never before. Even St. Paul and other early Christian writers are artfully grounded here in their classical literary context.
A dynamic and comprehensive introduction to Greek and Roman literature, Jenkyns’s Classical Literature is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the classics — and the extraordinary origins of Western culture.
“There is scarcely anything on which he does not offer an original aperç sometimes illuminating, sometimes simply provocative, but always worth reading… Jenkyns’s view of ancient literature is Olympian.” — G.W. Bowersock, The New York Review of Books
“A feat of both scholarship and storytelling” (Wall Street Journal)—the definitive history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries.
In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built—and then lost—over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. The Habsburgs dominated Central Europe through the First World War.
Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. This is the remarkable history of a dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world.
In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built—and then lost—over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. The Habsburgs dominated Central Europe through the First World War.
Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. This is the remarkable history of a dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world.
In Uncommon Wrath, historian Josiah Osgood tells the story of how the political rivalry between Julius Caesar and Marcus Cato precipitated the end of the Roman Republic. As the champions of two dominant but distinct visions for Rome, Caesar and Cato each represented qualities that had made the Republic strong, but their ideological differences entrenched into enmity and mutual fear. The intensity of their collective factions became a tribal divide, hampering their ability to make good decisions and undermining democratic government. The men’s toxic polarity meant that despite their shared devotion to the Republic, they pushed it into civil war.
Deeply researched and compellingly told, Uncommon Wrath is a groundbreaking biography of two men whose hatred for each other destroyed the world they loved.
From an award-winning historian of ancient Rome, the definitive history of Rome’s most devastating defeat
August 2, 216 BC was one of history’s bloodiest single days of fighting. On a narrow plain near the Southern Italian town of Cannae, despite outnumbering their opponents almost two to one, a massive Roman army was crushed by the heterogeneous forces of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who had spectacularly crossed the Alps into Italy two years earlier. The scale of the losses at Cannae — 50,000 Roman men killed — was unrivaled until the industrialized slaughter of the First World War. Although the Romans eventually recovered and Carthage lost the war, the Battle of Cannae became Romans’ point of reference for all later military catastrophes. Ever since, military commanders confronting a superior force have attempted, and usually failed, to reproduce Hannibal’s tactics and their overwhelming success.
In Cannae, the celebrated historian Adrian Goldsworthy offers a concise and enthralling history of one of the most famous battles ever waged, setting Cannae within the larger contexts of the Second Punic War and the nature of warfare in the third century BC. It is a gripping read for historians, strategists, and anyone curious about warfare in antiquity and Rome’s rise to power.