Rome and Her Empire (History & Politics)

by Barry W. Cunliffe

Far more than a history, this brilliantly illustrated volume offers a reconstruction in human terms of the many facets of Rome's extraordinary legacy. The Romans speak to us here through their splendid achievements and their tragic failures, their monuments and their tastes, to give us an understanding of the spirit behind these dramatic events. From village to Empire, for nearly a millennium Rome kept up a dizzying pace of change and expansion. Stirring victories over Hannibal, the Gauls, the Britons alternated with peaceful intervals of cultural development under Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, until the final days of chaos and decline. Those thousand years take shape on the pages of Professor Cunliffe's beautiful book to give us a gradually unfolding vision of a people who once lived and of a resplendent world now in ruins. Instead of a textbook, he has virtually recreated Rome itself, a world opening up, maintaining its brief, fragile balance, and then collapsing. The whole dynamic n