The Rise of Rome

The Rise of Rome
Anthony Everitt

Anthony Everitt follows up biographies of Cicero, Augustus and Hadrian with this more extensive popular history taking Rome from its legendary founding down to the beginnings of the Principate (near the end of the first century BCE). Despite being a story of Rome’s rise to becoming “the world’s greatest empire,” Everitt also shows how these same years involved the unmaking of the Republic, not to mention the enslavement and destruction of Rome’s many rivals. It’s a familiar story, culled from the usual classical sources (Polybius, Livy, Plutarch), but it never loses relevance.