This textbook is endorsed by OCR and supports the specification for GCSE Ancient History (first teaching September 2017). It covers the whole of Component 2, both the compulsory longer Period Study and the three optional Depth Studies: Longer Period Study: The Foundations of Rome: From Kingship to Republic, 753-440 BC by Paul Fowler Depth Study: Hannibal and the Second Punic War, 218-201 BC by Paul Fowler Depth Study: Cleopatra: Rome And Egypt, 69-30 BC by James Melville Depth Study: Britannia: From Conquest to Province, AD 43-c. 84 by Christopher Grocock How did reactions to the exploitation of women and the poor make Rome great? How did Rome survive a fourteen-year invasion? Was Cleopatra a great queen? What was the impact of Roman invasion on Britain's diverse and prosperous culture? This book raises these and other key questions. GCSE students and their teachers will explore the foundation of Rome, the rise of its empire, and its interactions with neighbouring cultures, through the eyes of its historians and archaeology. This book invites us to look at Ancient Rome and the modern world in a new light. The ideal preparation for the final examinations, all content is presented by experts and experienced teachers in a clear and accessible narrative. Ancient literary and visual sources are described and analysed, with supporting images. Helpful student features include study questions, further reading, and boxes focusing in on key people, events and terms. Practice questions and exam guidance prepare students for assessment. A Companion Website is available at www.bloomsbury.com/anc-hist-gcse.

This volume contains Latin texts, facing translations, and full commentary on four texts which are key to an understanding of the development of monasticism in early medieval Northumbria: Bede's History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, his Homily on Benedict Biscop, and his Letter to Ecgbert, Archbishop of York, together with the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith. The texts are based on a fresh collation of all available manuscripts, and a complete apparatus criticus is included. The translation is as close to the original as possible while communicating its sense clearly. A series of essays in the introduction examines the importance of the texts, the picture they paint both of Bede and his monastic milieu, and the Latinity of the texts included in the volume. As the major texts on the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, these works are vital for our understanding both of the context in which Bede was writing and also of the nature of monasticism in Northumbria in the pre-Viking period.