The World Of Rome

The World of Rome is an introduction to the history and culture of Rome for students at university and at school as well as for anyone seriously interested in the ancient world. Drawing on the latest scholarship, it covers all aspects of the city - its rise to power, what made it great, and why it still engages and challenges us today. The first two chapters outline the history and changing identity of Rome from 1000 BC to AD 476. Subsequent chapters examine the mechanisms of government, the economic and social life of Rome, and Roman ways of looking at and reflecting the world. Frequent quotations from ancient writers and numerous illustrations make this a stimulating and accessible introduction to ancient Rome. The World of Rome is particularly designed to serve as a background book to Reading Latin (Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Grant has brought together all the diverse achievements of the Roman people that he considers the most fundamental to our understanding of Rome's dominant role in the evolution of our modern world: the magnificence and corruption; the republic, the dictators and the slaves, the civilization and Pax Romana, the brutality and the collapse, Rome at the time of her unequalled power from 133 B.C. to 217 A.D. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE KANSAS CITY STAR From Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, comes a riveting, magisterial account of Rome and its remarkable ascent from an obscure agrarian backwater to the greatest empire the world has ever known. Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become the ancient world’s preeminent power. Everitt fashions the story of Rome’s rise to glory into an erudite page-turner filled with lasting lessons for our time. He chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome’s shrewd strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire. And he outlines the corrosion of constitutional norms that accompanied Rome’s imperial expansion, as old habits of political compromise gave way, leading to violence and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome was left triumphant everywhere except within its own borders. Everitt paints indelible portraits of the great Romans—and non-Romans—who left their mark on the world out of which the mighty empire grew: Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington, the very model of the patrician warrior/aristocrat; the brilliant general Scipio Africanus, who turned back a challenge from the Carthaginian legend Hannibal; and Alexander the Great, the invincible Macedonian conqueror who became a role model for generations of would-be Roman rulers. Here also are the intellectual and philosophical leaders whose observations on the art of government and “the good life” have inspired every Western power from antiquity to the present: Cato the Elder, the famously incorruptible statesman who spoke out against the decadence of his times, and Cicero, the consummate orator whose championing of republican institutions put him on a collision course with Julius Caesar and whose writings on justice and liberty continue to inform our political discourse today. Rome’s decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but the story of how the empire was won is every bit as compelling. With The Rise of Rome, one of our most revered chroniclers of the ancient world tells that tale in a way that will galvanize, inform, and enlighten modern readers. Praise for The Rise of Rome “Fascinating history and a great read.”—Chicago Sun-Times “An engrossing history of a relentlessly pugnacious city’s 500-year rise to empire.”—Kirkus Reviews “Rome’s history abounds with remarkable figures. . . . Everitt writes for the informed and the uninformed general reader alike, in a brisk, conversational style, with a modern attitude of skepticism and realism.”—The Dallas Morning News “[A] lively and readable account . . . Roman history has an uncanny ability to resonate with contemporary events.”—Maclean’s “Elegant, swift and faultless as an introduction to his subject.”—The Spectator “[An] engaging work that will captivate and inform from beginning to end.”—Booklist

Fergus Millar is one of the most influential contemporary historians of the ancient world. His essays and books, including The Emperor in the Roman World and The Roman Near East, have enriched our understanding of the Greco-Roman world in fundamental ways. In his writings Millar has made the inhabitants of the Roman Empire central to our conception of how the empire functioned. He also has shown how and why Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam evolved from within the wider cultural context of the Greco-Roman world. Opening this collection of sixteen essays is a new contribution by Millar in which he defends the continuing significance of the study of Classics and argues for expanding the definition of what constitutes that field. In this volume he also questions the dominant scholarly interpretation of politics in the Roman Republic, arguing that the Roman people, not the Senate, were the sovereign power in Republican Rome. In so doing he sheds new light on the establishment of a new regime by the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus.

By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean basin. What transformed a humble city into the preeminent power of the region? In The Rise of Rome, the historian and archaeologist Kathryn Lomas reconstructs the diplomatic ploys, political stratagems, and cultural exchanges whereby Rome established itself as a dominant player in a region already brimming with competitors. The Latin world, she argues, was not so much subjugated by Rome as unified by it. This new type of society that emerged from Rome’s conquest and unification of Italy would serve as a political model for centuries to come. Archaic Italy was home to a vast range of ethnic communities, each with its own language and customs. Some such as the Etruscans, and later the Samnites, were major rivals of Rome. From the late Iron Age onward, these groups interacted in increasingly dynamic ways within Italy and beyond, expanding trade and influencing religion, dress, architecture, weaponry, and government throughout the region. Rome manipulated preexisting social and political structures in the conquered territories with great care, extending strategic invitations to citizenship and thereby allowing a degree of local independence while also fostering a sense of imperial belonging. In the story of Rome’s rise, Lomas identifies nascent political structures that unified the empire’s diverse populations, and finds the beginnings of Italian peoplehood.

Rome is a city rich in history and culture and imbued with a realism and romanticism that has captured the imaginations of filmmakers throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With over two and a half thousand years of continuing history, Rome has served as the setting for countless memorable films, creating a backdrop that spans all genres and emotions. World Film Locations: Rome takes the reader on a cinematic journey through the city with stops at key locations that include the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Via Veneto, Piazza del Popolo, Sant’Angelo Bridge and, of course, the Trevi Fountain, made famous world-wide in its appearances in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Jean Negulesco’s Three Coins in the Fountain. A carefully selected compilation of forty-five key films set in Rome, including The Belly of an Architect, The Facts of Murder, The Bicycle Thief, Roman Holiday and The Great Beauty, is complemented by essays that further examine the relationship between the city and cinema to provide an engaging, colourful and insightful page-turning journey for both travellers and film buffs alike.

Romulus and Remus, the rape of Lucretia, Horatius at the bridge, the saga of Coriolanus, Cincinnatus called from his farm to save the state -- these and many more are stories which, immortalized by Livy in his history of early Rome, have become part of our cultural heritage. This new annotated translation includes maps and an index and is based on R. M Ogilvie's Oxford Classical text, the best to date. - ;`the fates ordained the founding of this great city and the beginning of the world's mightiest empire, second only to the power of the gods' Romulus and Remus, the rape of Lucretia, Horatius at the bridge, the saga of Coriolanus, Cincinnatus called from his farm to save the state - these and many more are stories which, immortalised by Livy in his history of early Rome, have become part of our cultural heritage. The historian's huge work, written between 20 BC and AD 17, ran to 12 books, beginning with Rome's founding in 753 BC and coming down to Livy's own lifetime (9 BC). Books 1-5 cover the period from Rome's beginnings to her first great foreign conquest, the capture of the Etruscan city of Veii and, a few years later, to her first major defeat, the sack of the city by the Gauls in 390 BC. -

A survey of Roman art and culture from the time of the first settlements on the eastern bank of the Tiber to the moment when secular Rome was succeeded by ecclesiastical Rome during the Middle Ages. For a long time Roman art was considered essentially nothing but a derivative, provincial form of Greek art. It is the special aim of the author to stress the unique quality of Roman culture and to present it as a national art, in spite of all the outside influences.