By drawing on a very large number of German sources, many of them previously unpublished, Jack Sheldon throws new light on a familiar story. In an account filled with graphic descriptions of life and death in the trenches, the author demonstrates that the dreadful losses of 1st July were a direct consequence of meticulous German planning and preparation. Although the Battle of the Somme was frequently a close-run affair, poor Allied co-ordination and persistence in attacking weakly on narr...

Using the results of archaeological techniques, and examining methodological debates, Tim Cornell provides a lucid and authoritative account of the rise of Rome.The Beginnings of Rome offers insight on major issues such as:Rome’s relations with the Etruscansthe conflict between patricians and plebeiansthe causes of Roman imperialismthe growth of slave-based economy.Answering the need for raising acute questions and...

Cities in the ancient world relied on private generosity to provide many basic amenities, as well as expecting leading citizens to pay for 'bread and circuses' - free food and public entertainment. This collection of essays by leading scholars from the UK and USA explores the important phenomenon of benefaction and public patronage in Roman Italy. Ranging from the late republican period to the later Roman Empire, the contributions cover a wide range of topics, including the impact of benef...

The rise and fall of the Roman Republic occupies a special place in the history of Western civilization. From humble beginnings on the seven hills beside the Tiber, the city of Rome grew to dominate the ancient Mediterranean. Led by her senatorial aristocracy, Republican armies defeated Carthage and the successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great, and brought the surrounding peoples to east and west into the Roman sphere. Yet the triumph of the Republic was also its tragedy. In this Very Sho...

From the Renaissance to today, the idea that the Roman Republic lasted more than 450 years--persisting unbroken from the late sixth century to the mid-first century BC--has profoundly shaped how Roman history is understood, how the ultimate failure of Roman republicanism is explained, and how republicanism itself is defined. In Roman Republics, Harriet Flower argues for a completely new interpretation of republican chronology. Radically challenging the traditional picture of a sin...

The author of Rome Is Burning separates fact from fiction as he examines the life of an ancient Roman figure made famous in the TV miniseries I Claudius.Livia—wife of the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, and mother of the second, Tiberius—wielded extraordinary power at the center of Roman politics. In this biography of Livia, the first in English, Anthony Barrett sets aside the portrait of a cunning and sinister schemer to reveal Livia as a c...

The games comprised gladiatorial fights, staged animal hunts (venationes) and the executions of convicted criminals and prisoners of war. Besides entertaining the crowd, the games delivered a powerful message of Roman power: as a reminder of the wars in which Rome had acquired its empire, the distant regions of its far-flung empire (from where they had obtained wild beasts for the venatio), and the inevitability of Roman justice for criminals and those foreigners who had ...

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...

This book offers a radical new survey of more than a thousand years of religious life at Rome. It sets religion in its full cultural context, between the primitive hamlet of the eighth century BC and the cosmopolitan, multicultural society of the first centuries of the Christian era. The narrative account is structured around a series of broad themes: how to interpret the Romans' own theories of their religious system and its origins; the relationship of religion and the changing politics ...

The age of Augustus, commonly dated to 30 BC – AD 14, was a pivotal period in world history. A time of tremendous change in Rome, Italy, and throughout the Mediterranean world, many developments were underway when Augustus took charge and a recurring theme is the role that he played in shaping their direction. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus captures the dynamics and richness of this era by examining important aspects of political and social history, religion, literature, an...

The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic examines all aspects of Roman history and civilization from 509 to 49 BC. The key development of the republican period was Rome's rise from a small city to a wealthy metropolis, which served as the international capital of an extensive Mediterranean empire. These centuries produced a classic republican political culture, closely associated with the growth of a world empire. They also witnessed the slow disintegration of republican government un...

Fergus Millar is one of the most influential contemporary historians of the ancient world. His essays and books, above all The Emperor in the Roman World and The Roman Near East, have transformed our understanding of the communal culture and civil government of the Greco-Roman world. This second volume of the three-volume collection of Millar’s published essays draws together twenty of his classic pieces on the government, society, and culture of the Roman Empire (some of...