The author of several popular histories of the ancient world,
Michael Grant here narrates the history of Rome from the city's
days as an Etruscan village to the Western empire's dissolution in
the 5th century. Concentrating on the vicissitudes of political
leadership and economic life, he shows Roman culture to have been
deeply conservative and authoritarian by virtue of its rigid
patriarchy and politicized religion. The resulting public order
gave Rome a strong local base as a seat of power and helped nourish
a tough political spirit, which flourished in the Republic, then
passed into the Empire where eventually it died. The decisive turn
in Roman history, for Grant, was not therefore the passage from
Republic to Empire and one-man rule - this inevitably resulted from
the Republic's political and economic weaknesses. Nor was the
turning point a weakening of public morals or the rise of decadent
emperors. Rather, the clue to Rome's decline lay in the Empire's
expansion beyond its economic means of support, which forced the
government to wrest funds from its citizens, thus alienating the
rich and ruining the poor. The Empire finally became an armed camp
threatened from without and seething with resentment inside. The
once - vital political life could not survive in such
circumstances: the institutional death of the Empire only reflected
this internal political death. Though nicely written and broadly
informed, Grant's narrative lacks the reach and enlivening detail,
the fresh perceptions and sureness required to make another history
of Rome thoroughly worth reading (as Hooper's is, below). (Kirkus
Reviews)
From a small Iron Age settlement on the banks of the Tiber, Rome
grew to become the centre of an Empire that dominated the Western
world. Powerful in war, Rome was magnificent in peace, so that even
today her poets, artists, philosophers and historians exert their
influence over Western thought and civilisation. Michael Grant, the
renowned classical historian, recreates the evolution of this
astonishing city and community. He describes the individuals and
events that made Rome a political and cultural conqueror, and
defines the dramatic circumstances of her eventual decline and
fall.
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