Here are 100 books that Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World fans have personally recommended if you like
Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World.
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I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
I love historical detective novels, and this one, set in AD 70, is a great way to immerse yourself in the Roman world. Lindsey Davis does her research, creating a real, lived-in space that makes the ancient past feel alive and present.
Another big plus is that it’s hilariously entertaining: I’m regularly guffawing out loud while reading it. Best of all? It’s the first book in a fantastic series, and I’ve enjoyed following private instigator Marcus Didius Falco, and then later his daughter, Flavia Alba, over a number of adventures across the city of Rome and the wider Empire.
Rome. AD 70. Private eye Marcus Didius Falco knows his way round the eternal city. He can handle the muggers, the police and most of the girls. But one fresh 16 year old, Sosia Camillina, finds him a case no Roman should be getting his nose into . . . Sosia's uncle is a Senator with suspicions. Some friends, Romans and countryment are doing a highly profitable, if highly illegal, trade in silver ingots or pigs. For Falco it's the start of a murderous trail that leads far beyond the seven hills. To a godforsaken land called Britain, to Emperor…
I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
In my own research, I’m interested in how Roman imperialism is shaped through the concept of peace and this is central to Tom Holland’s latest examination of power in the ancient Mediterranean world.
I found myself sucked into to the cinematic accounts of shocking and poignant events, such as the erection of Vesuvius and the sacking of Jerusalem, yet also really struck by how Holland manages to paint a picture of the vast diversity and difference to be experienced in the Roman world. And I particularly like that he reminds us how different the Romans are from ourselves.
The definitive history of Rome's golden age - antiquity's ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness
The Pax Romana has long been revered as a golden age. At its peak, the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to Arabia, and contained perhaps a quarter of humanity. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state the world had yet seen.
Beginning in 69AD, a year that saw four Caesars in succession rule the empire, and ending some seven decades later with the death of Hadrian, Pax presents a dazzling history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded…
I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
I hold up my hands and admit to being a nerd when it comes to ancient coins – there is something immediate and tangible about the past and the messages people communicated on these small, everyday objects exchanging hands.
Clare Rowan’s book (and also Liv Yarrow’s book, The Roman Republic to 49 BCE: Using Coins as Sources) is a great introduction to understanding how to ‘read’ ancient Roman coins and what they can help us understand about the end of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Empire.
Plus, as a visual learner, I love that there are so many images in the book!
This unique book provides the student of Roman history with an accessible and detailed introduction to Roman and provincial coinage in the late Republic and early Empire in the context of current historical themes and debates. Almost two hundred different coins are illustrated at double life size, with each described in detail, and technical Latin and numismatic terms are explained. Chapters are arranged chronologically, allowing students to quickly identify material relevant to Julius Caesar, the second triumvirate, the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, and the Principate of Augustus. Iconography, archaeological contexts, and the economy are clearly presented. A diverse array…
As a child, I learned that I was able to lucid dream at will, speaking to the beings I met in these places I’d never seen before, and it always gave me a sense of interconnectedness. A thread that goes through all of us and our histories. I believe that the ancients dedicated so much of their energy and resources to preserving their stories in order to maintain this connection because it’s so important. Inside all of us is a darkness that, if left unchecked would lead us to ruin. These books all demonstrate the inner struggle we have to understand and redirect that darkness toward the light and the good.
I find myself struggling with the impulse to see the great empires as superhumans or so different from me that I could never understand how they live as they do.
This book reminded me that my fears and selfish desires aren’t so different from those of the Romans. I see signs of their impact in my everyday life, and I constantly wonder what life was like for Romans who never would have thought that people like me would be studying them centuries later. This book takes me into the mindset of people living in constant threat of annihilation and how it may impact my view of humanity.
They say true happiness is finding something you love, and getting paid to do it, which makes me one happy bunny. Ancient history has been my passion, my hobby and my job for the past three decades, and I still wake up every morning looking forward to another day of it. Thanks to the internet I can study the classics and still hike in the mountains and kayak the mountain lakes of my corner of British Columbia. It doesn't get better than this.
A self-contained description of a war fought in Africa against an ambitious monarch, in which the Roman superpower struggles with an elusive enemy. Roman efforts are badly hampered by corrupt generals and Sallust, writing a generation later makes no attempt to conceal his contempt for the aristocratic establishment which happily pocketed Jugurtha's bribes. A book that reads well and is relevant today. Get the Oxford University Press edition, and get the Catiline conspiracy thrown in for free.
Sallust (86-c. 35 bc) is the earliest Roman historian of whom complete works survive, a senator of the Roman Republic and younger contemporary of Cicero, Pompey and Julius Caesar. His Catiline's War tells of the conspiracy in 63 bc led by L. Sergius Catilina, who plotted to assassinate numerous senators and take control of the government, but was thwarted by Cicero. Sallust's vivid account of Roman public life shows a Republic in decline, prey to moral corruption and internal strife. In The Jugurthine War he describes Rome's fight in Africa against the king of the Numidians from 111 to 105…
My fascination with the relationship between Rome and America grows out of the work I have done on early American culture, contemporary political thought, and ancient Rome. My most recent work, Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging, took shape through a lot of conversations over the years with friends and colleagues about the different tensions I saw in Roman politics and culture around questions of national identity, tensions that I saw being played out in the United States. I don’t like tidy histories. I am drawn to explorations of politics and culture that reveal the anxieties and dissonance that derive from our own attempt to resolve our incompleteness.
One of the issues I have sought to counter in my work is our sense of the Romans as boring. At times they even saw themselves that way. We know the Romans by way of their contributions to law, constitutionalism, administration, and oratory. This collection of essays is engaging because of the surprising ways in which Rome not only figures into popular culture, from Broadway to the movies, but is employed in explorations of marginal identities.
The phenomenal success of the recent film Gladiator ensures that ancient Rome will continue to inspire moviemakers and attract audiences as it has done since the dawn of cinema. Indeed, the creators of popular culture have so often appropriated elements of Roman history and society for films and television programs, novels and comic books, advertising and computer games that most people's knowledge of ancient Rome derives from these representations. In Imperial Projections, scholars from a variety of fields-classics, history, film studies, and gender theory-provide an interdisciplinary look at how ancient Rome has been depicted in the media and what these…
I’m a writer and educator working in central Virginia, and I’ve been in love with the ancient world since my first Latin class back in the seventh grade. I’ve always been interested in social history more than just the chronology of battles and the deeds of famous men, so my research looks for sources that can illuminate daily life and the viewpoints of marginalized populations. I hold a BA in English and History from the College of William and Mary and an MLitt from Mary Baldwin University.
This book provides an exemplary hour-by-hour guide to what life was like for a citizen of Rome at the height of its power. I love that Angela not only gives us the high-society angle, bringing us into the lush gardens and sumptuous homes of Rome’s wealthy and powerful, but also the crowded apartments and streets that were home to the vast majority of the ancient city’s citizens. You walk alongside them, getting a ground-level view of the patterns of a normal day in all its mundane details, from clothing to food to labor to entertainment, rendered in fascinating prose.
The wondrous extravagance of banquets where flamingos are roasted whole and wine flows like rivers. The roar of frenzied spectators inside the Colosseum during a battle between gladiators. A crowd of onlookers gathered at a slave auction. The silent baths and the boisterous taverns...Many books have dealt with the history of ancient Rome, but none has been able to so engage its readers in the daily life of the Imperial capital.
This extraordinary armchair tour, guided by Alberto Angela with the charm of a born storyteller, lasts twenty-four hours, beginning at dawn on an ordinary day in the year 115…
I’m a professor of Roman history who teaches and writes about the social world of the ancient Romans. I’m drawn to the topic of ancient Rome because it seems simultaneously familiar and alien: the people always “feel real” to me, but the many cultural differences between Rome and modern America prod me to contemplate those aspects and values of my own world that I take for granted. I enjoy the high moral stakes of the political machinations as well as the aesthetic beauty of the artistic creations of Rome. And the shadow of Rome still looms large in American culture, so I find the study of antiquity endlessly instructive.
Perhaps the best place to start for a novice looking to learn about Roman history. I have had students, friends, and family all tell me that this was the book that really got them excited about ancient Rome.
Beard is a very witty, engaging writer who is able to combine major historical moments with obscure but revealing anecdotes to tell a coherent narrative of Roman history. She also demonstrates, such as in her introductory chapter’s discussion of modern references to the ancient conflict between Cicero and Catiline, the continuing relevance of Roman history to our understanding of politics today.
In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but…
As a kid, I was fascinated by Greek mythology. Through myth, I encountered many powerful female characters—Athena was my favorite—but I felt frustrated by how women’s lives were told in my books. My interest in Greek myth and curiosity about untold stories led me to become a Classics professor. I love teaching and writing about women in the ancient world, helping people to understand how they navigated their lives. Luckily for me, many recent books across various genres, from novels to translations to histories, have illuminated the lives of ancient women. There’s so much more to read than when I was growing up!
Very few histories of Rome manage to be both trenchant and laugh-out-loud funny. Emma Southon’s is one. I was laughing and wincing at the same time. I was especially impressed because many of the figures Southon discusses (Tanaquil, Lucretia, Tarpeia) are shrouded in Rome’s self-serving patriotic myths.
Southon tells their stories in a colorful, empathetic narrative that dares to imagine what the women’s point of view might have been like. She also makes clear how much Rome, that quintessentially patriarchal ancient empire, imagined itself as founded on the bodies of women.
From the acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a wildly entertaining new history of Rome that uses the lives of 21 women to upend our understanding of the ancient world
The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “the Doing of Important Things.” And as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through the political stab-fest of the late Republic, and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to…
I’ve loved history ever since I was a kid when I first had the realisation that it was made up of stories. Ancient Rome has always fascinated me, not the battles or the emperors or the big picture stuff, but the daily lives of the ordinary people. You only need to read some of the rude graffiti from Pompeii to realise that people have never really changed where it counts! I studied English and History at university, neither of them as thoroughly as I could have, but at least now when people ask me what I’d ever use an Arts degree for, I can point to my book.
There are, of course, lots of amazing non-fiction resources on Ancient Rome, but I love the way this one is written as a travel guide, as though you’re a tourist clutching a copy of Lonely Planet.
This is a fun and accessible book, easy to dip in and out of, but also great to read in one hit. There aren’t any emperors or empire-defining battles in this one, just walking tours of the city, tips on where to eat and what to see, and where to go for shopping and entertainment.
The only disappointing thing about this book is the realisation that time travel isn’t actually a thing.
