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    Rome: An Empire's Story
    Rome: An Empire's Story
    Rome: An Empire's Story
    Audiobook12 hours

    Rome: An Empire's Story

    Written by Greg Woolf

    Narrated by Liam Gerrard

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The very idea of empire was created in ancient Rome and even today traces of its monuments, literature, and institutions can be found across Europe, the Near East, and North Africa-and sometimes even further afield.

    In Rome, historian Greg Woolf expertly recounts how this mammoth empire was created, how it was sustained in crisis, and how it shaped the world of its rulers and subjects-a story spanning a millennium and a half of history. The personalities and events of Roman history have become part of the West's cultural lexicon, and Woolf provides brilliant retellings of each of these, from the war with Carthage to Octavian's victory over Cleopatra, from the height of territorial expansion under the emperors Trajan and Hadrian to the founding of Constantinople and the barbarian invasions which resulted in Rome's ultimate collapse. Throughout, Woolf carefully considers the conditions that made Rome's success possible and so durable, covering topics as diverse as ecology, slavery, and religion. Woolf also compares Rome to other ancient empires and to its many later imitators, bringing into vivid relief the Empire's most distinctive and enduring features.

    As Woolf demonstrates, nobody ever planned to create a state that would last more than a millennium and a half, yet Rome was able, in the end, to survive barbarian migrations, economic collapse and even the conflicts between a series of world religions that had grown up within its borders, in the process generating an image and a myth of empire that is apparently indestructible.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 11, 2018
    ISBN9781977388674
    Rome: An Empire's Story

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    Reviews for Rome

    4/5

    23 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      An excellent synthesis of modern historical research emphasising the social, environmental, and ecological basis of the growth and survival of the Roman Empire.

      The narrator sometimes fails to grasp the flow of sentences but this is not too distracting.
    • 4/5
      A quick overview of a lot of subjects covering Rome and Roman life.
    • 4/5
      This is an excellent overview of how Rome built and sustained an Empire.

      Woolf considers a range of factors in turn - such as geography, climate, culture/religion, the economy, and the institutions they established - and describes how they contributed to the success of the Empire. His comparisons to other empires of similar scale were informative.

      The 'further reading' sections at the end of each chapter are particularly helpful for those who want to explore a particular aspect of Roman history in more depth.

      Partly because of its succinct breadth, the author sometimes favours dry details over the more interesting personalities or happenings. Occasionally a tantalisingly interesting fact is just left hanging, eg: Signs of the seriousness with which the Senate treated Hannibal's victory at Cannae in 216 included [...] the live burial of a Gallic couple and a Greek couple in the Roman fourm. p. 73. Why?? This is not footnoted, or explained.

      The book devotes far less time to the decline of the Empire, but does consider it in relation to the factors that had driven its establishment.

    • 4/5
      I liked the book, but hesitate to like it too much as I can't get behind historians that only recommend recent work. Surely of all the things said about Rome, some of what was written more than 30 years ago is still worth reading. That Gibbon isn't even in the bibliography breaks my heart.