Series: The Profile History of the Ancient World Series

For centuries, Rome was one of the world's largest imperial powers, its influence spread across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Its military force successfully fought off attacks by the Parthians, Germans, Persians, and Goths. Then came the definitive split, the Vandal sack of Rome, and the crumbling of the West from Empire into kingdoms first nominally under Imperial...

In 264 BC, a Roman army was poised to cross from southern Italy into Sicily. They couldn’t know that this crossing would be Rome’s first step on its journey from local republic to vast and powerful empire. At the beginning of the three dramatic centuries that make up this book's narrative, Rome had no emperor and limited global influence; by...

In the late Iron Age, Rome was a small collection of huts arranged over a few hills. By the third century BC, it had become a large and powerful city, with monumental temples, public buildings and grand houses. It had conquered the whole of Italy and was poised to establish an empire. But how did it accomplish this historic transformation?...

The ancient world that Alexander the Great transformed in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death. The imperial dynasties of his successors incorporated and reorganised the fallen Persian empire, creating a new land empire stretching from the shores of the Mediterranean to as far east as Bactria. In old Greece, a fragile balance of power was continually disturbed...