THE old or official religions of Greece and of Rome had lost most of their power long before Constantine first declared that Christianity was henceforth to be recognized as a religio licita and then proceeded to bestow the Imperial favor on the faith which his predecessors had persecuted. Hellenism had destroyed their influence over the cultivated classes, and other religions, coming from the East, had captivated the masses of the people. If temples, dedicated to the gods of Olympus, were ...

AT the accession of Clovis, who succeeded his father Childeric about the year 481, the Salian Franks had advanced as far as the Somme. Between the Somme and the Loire the suzerainty of the Roman Empire was still maintained. The various Gallo-Roman cities preserved a certain independence, while a Roman official, by name Syagrius, exercised a kind of protection over them. Syagrius was the son of Aegidius, the former magister militum, and he held the command by hereditary right. After the fal...

Cambridge Medieval History: Germany and the Western Empire is an expansive treatise on Western civilization after the fall of Rome. From 800 to 1000 A.D. ,the rise of the Franks, Germanic tribes, and the Viking invasions of Europe are all covered in great detail. A table of contents is included for easier navigation.

The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms, by illustrious historian J.B. Bury, chronicles the 3rd through 7th centuries A.D.

The Cambridge Medieval History collection on the Eastern Roman Empire is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of the Eastern Empire, from the Balkans to Armenia. The collection is an exhaustive resource, discussing the empire from 500 1500 A.D. Topics such as the history of the Bulgarian kingdom, Armenia, the Venetian occupation of Greece , the Golden Horde, the Seljuqs, and the Ottomans and their conquests in Europe are discussed. A table of contents is included to navigate th...

Charles I or Charlemagne united most of Western Europe during the Middle Ages and laid the foundations for modern France and Germany. He was the first recognized Roman emperor in the West since the collapse of the Roman Empire three centuries earlier and ruled absolutely over a vast domain for thirteen years.Einhard’s biography of the Carolingian Empire’s founder The Life of Charlemagne: Vita Karoli Magni is one of the most famous pieces of literature on the early Middle Ages. It i...

A History of the Roman Empire from Its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius is a massive tome chronicling the Empire from the time of Julius Caesar until the end of Marcus Aurelius reign. 29 chapters and 470 full length pages take you through the golden age of the Roman Empire under the rule of the emperors. A table of contents is included for easy navigation.

J.B. Bury was a celebrated historian who wrote around the turn of the 19th century. His classics on the Roman Empire and Greece still stand among the best texts on the classical civilizations. The period between the 4th and 6th centuries A.D. was one of incredible upheaval for the Roman Empire. The West saw Rome sacked by invaders from the North, while the Eastern Empire flourished and saw much of the old Roman lands re-conquered during the conquests of Belisarius under Justinian I. Burys ...

History of three wars from the reign of Justinian, Byzantine emperor -- The Persian War, The Vandalic War, and The Gothic War. According to Wikipedia: "Procopius of Caesarea (Latin: Procopius Caesarensis, c. AD 500 c. AD 565) was a prominent Byzantine scholar from Palestine. Accompanying the general Belisarius in the wars of the Emperor Justinian I, he became the principal historian of the 6th century, writing the Wars of Justinian, the Buildings of Justinian and the celebrated Secret Hist...

Few books before have explored the exploits, achievements, and notorious antics of ancient Rome's imperial dynasties in such readable detail. This title sets out to describe the lives of every man (and a few women) who aspired to the purple, from Augustus in 27 BC to Justinian I, who died in AD 565—arguably the end of Rome's classical period. Many are familiar with the descendants of Julius Caesar—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero—but how many readers know about Maximinus Thrax, Claud...

Jordanes, also written Jordanis or (not common nowadays) Jornandes, was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat best known for writing histories. Jordanes wrote Romana about the history of Rome, but his best-known work is his Getica, written in Constantinople about AD 551. It is the only extant classical work dealing with the early history of the Goths. Jordanes was asked by a friend to write this book as a summary of a multi-volume history of the Goths (now lost) by the statesman Cassiodorus. He was ...

Viscount James Bryce's The Holy Roman Empire is a fascinating history of the Empire.