Reviews

The history of ancient Rome is one of humanity’s great sagas—a long, dramatic narrative to which both “high culture” icons like Shakespeare and “pop culture” moguls like Hollywood producers repeatedly turn. The proper telling of this story, however, is no small challenge; it encompasses ten centuries, thousands of leading actors, dozens of intertwined cultures, three continents and the entire gamut of human motivations. To encapsulate all this within the covers of a book is to create a jewel. Such jewels do exist, starting with Edward Gibbon’s immortal Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written in the latter part […]