History Unlimited Bookshop: Histories of Rome and Byzantium

The Classical Sources

The Roman Imperium produced notable, if rarely objective, historians. The surviving texts are often the only contemporary source material for modern historians. Our selection is by no means inclusive, but some of the more glaring omissions will be added in the future. The titles are organised in the chronological order of the authors’ births.

Commentaries: On The Gallic War & On The Civil War / Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar, 100-44 BCE. The complete edition of Caesar’s Commentaries in a translation that reflects the quality of the original texts — the author was recognised as a writer of the first rank by his contemporaries. Although composed, at least in part, to promote Caesar’s achievements and ambitions to the citizens of a Rome in which he had spent little of his life, the Commentaries are written with a precision and economy that have retained their value as an historical record of extraordinary times.

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The Jugurthine War/The Conspiracy of Cataline / Sallust

Gaius Sallust Crispus, c86-34 BCE. Sallust owed political advancement to the patronage of Julius Caesar, with whom he allied himself against Pompey and the aristocracy of the old Republic. He was with Caesar during the African campaign that culminated in the defeat of Pompey, in reward for which he was appointed governor of Africa Nova. Rome’s dealings with the Numidian king Jugurtha was a saga of bribery and corruption that led to the Senate declaring war on Numidia in 111 BCE. Sallust’s monograph introduces the Roman generals Marius and Sulla to the political scene. The Conspiracy of Cataline covers the events of the year 63 BCE, with Sallust taking a stance of opposition to the Sullan party, which Catalina supported. It seems possible that Sallust’s account was written to clear Caesar of suspicions of involvement in the conspiracy.

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History of Rome from Its Foundation / Livy

Titus Livius, c59 BCE-17 CE. The moralising history of the early glory of Rome, intended to stand as warning to a degenerate generation.

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The Life of Herod / Josephus

Flavius Josephus, c37-100 CE. A Jewish apologist writing for a Roman audience, Josephus drew on near contemporary events for his Life of Herod. There emerges a bemusing picture of a far more complex character than that presented in New Testament accounts. Of alien stock and governing under Roman protection, Herod sought validation in Jewish eyes through statesmanship, great public works (including the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem) and acts of benevolence, while clinging to power through a regime of murderous despotism.

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The Jewish War / Josephus
Initially a Jewish general in the revolt against Rome, Josephus later switched sides and wrote this detailed account of the its suppression, culminating in the siege and destruction of Masada.

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The Makers of Rome / Plutarch

Mestrius Plutarchus, c45-125 CE. Nine biographies covering the careers and campaigns of the greatest statesmen of Rome, from the early days of the Republic to the creation of the Roman Empire.

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The Annals / Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus, c56-117 CE. Mindful of Rome’s former glories in the days of the Republic, Tacitus launches a vigorous critique of corruption and terror under the reigns of the Claudian emperors from the death of Augustus to the death of Nero. The catalogue of murders, wars, scandals and conspiracies were held up as a warning for the future of Imperial Rome.

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The Agricola and The Germania / Tacitus

The Agricola contains the first classical account of the island of Britain as part of this portrait of the author’s father-in-law and provincial governor, Julius Agricola. Agricola consolidated the imperial position with campaigns which included the ravaging of Anglesey and the suppression of the revolt of Boudicca, in 61 CE. The Germania reflects the author’s reluctant admiration of the martial German tribes.

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The Histories / Tacitus

The legacy of Nero was the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’, 69 CE, when the Empire was ripped apart by a murderous civil war. The action of The Histories ranges across virtually the whole of the Imperium and ends with the establishment of the Flavian dynasty under Vespasian.

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The Twelve Caesars / Seutonius
Gaius Seutonius Paulinus (or Tranqillius), c71-135 CE. First century Roman biographical sketches of the Caesars, from Julius to Domitian. Another of the principle classical sources for the period, from a secretary to the Emperor Hadrian.

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The Civil Wars / Appian

Appian of Alexandria, c95-165 CE. Extracted from the Roman History of Appian, The Civil Wars is the only surviving continuous historical work covering the period from 133 BCE to 35 BCE. From the Catiline conspiracy to the First Triumvirate and the assassination of Julius Caesar, and thence to the Second Triumvirate of Antonius, Lepidus and Octavian (the later Augustus), this volume vividly portrays the brutality of the power struggles that came to a head with the defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra at Actium.

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The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus / Cassius Dio

Cassius Cocceianus Dio, c164-235 CE. The first emperor of Rome put an end to the decades of civil war and revived the prosperity of the city, ‘finding a city of brick and leaving a city of marble’. This key text from Cassius Dio’s Roman History gives a comprehensive description of the feuds, campaigns and battles that destroyed the 400-year Republic. The reconstructed flights of oratory include the debate between Maecenas and Agrippa on the benefits of monarchy vs republicanism.

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The Secret History / Procopius
Procopius of Caesarea, c500-565 CE. A polemic against the Emperor Justinian, his General Belisarius and their wives Theodora and Antonina. The scandalous flip side of Byzantine history.

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Through Modern Eyes

Our collection opens with three giants who helped set the standard for historical scholarship and writing, up until the present day. Subsequent titles provide a somewhat arbitrary selection of modern scholarship, organised in the rough chronological order of the events they describe.

The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire Vols I-III / Edward Gibbon

The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire Vols IV-VI / Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon produced the first, and massively comprehensive, work of modern historiography, choosing for his subject the long-drawn-out decline of Rome and Byzantium. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is still unmatched in its ambition and scope after 200 years. Philosophical, elegant, witty and wonderfully opinionated, Gibbon’s anti-clericalism and his championing of Julian the Apostate caused more than a little outrage at the time of publication. One of the greatest historical works in the English language. Savour the writing.

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The History of Rome / Theodor Mommsen

Accused of being a mere journalist by some of his contemporaries, Mommsen survived the criticism to be translated into all major languages. And in the year before his death in 1903 he became the first German, and the first historian, to receive the Nobel prize for literature. In his account of Rome down to the triumph of his great hero Caesar and the end of the Republic, Mommsen set out to dismantle mythic traditions in order to arrive at an analytical history of the city and of Italy. In this he was representative of the rigour that characterised many German historians of the 19th Century. As well as producing a compelling narrative, Mommsen provides an invaluable guide to the evolution of Roman institutions and offices of state, essential to an understanding of the history of the Republic and the Empire. Mommsen’s work also had contemporary resonance. Published shortly after the turmoil of the Year of Revolutions, The History of Rome was written in the context of, and in comparison with, a Germany struggling to achieve political unity. His views on the value of empire as a civilising force give an uneasy premonition of German expansionism that was to be a contributing factor to the Great War.

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Huns, Vandals and the Fall of the Roman Empire / Thomas Hodgkin
An abridged version of our own eight volume edition of ‘The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire’. Hodgkin is a worthy successor to Gibbon, if holding different views on Christianity, the Britons and the barbarian invaders. The latter are seen as revitalising the defunct Western Empire by adopting and preserving many of its institutions. By the 4th Century Rome found it necessary to recruit more and more from beyond the Danube and the Rhine to supplement its armies and maintain the integrity of its extended borders. The barbarian mercenaries were exposed to Roman civilisation and military techniques, some rose to high rank within the military system and many were settled within the Empire in payment for military service. So that there was a kind of cultural disintegration of the natural boundaries that had limited Roman expansion. When the arrival of the Huns from the east began a series of massive folk movements there was a fifth column in place that opened the Empire in the west to invasion by mainly Germanic tribes.

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Hannibal / Ernle Bradford
Rome and Carthage struggled for control of the Western Mediterranean for more than a century. During the Second Punic War the Carthaginian general Hannibal ravaged Italy for some 16 years. The Hannibalic wars drew Rome into excursions beyond the Italian mainland for the first time and laid the foundations of the empire that was to follow.

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Julius Caesar / Christian Meier
First published in Germany in 1982, Christian Meier’s comprehensive work examines the context and career of an outsider, opportunist, aggressive imperialist, political manipulator, soldiers’ general and man of the people. Caesar’s defiance of a weakened and self-serving Senate led to civil war, conflict with his former fellow triumvir Pompey and the imposition of a dictatorship rather than a reformed and more democratic Republic. Caesar’s legacy was, in effect, a monarchy that cleared the way for the autocracy of the emperors, something that neither side had wanted.

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Cleopatra / Jack Lindsay
The meeting of a civilisation reaching the height of its strength with an ancient power in its sunset years. Ironically, the last Ptolemy Pharaoh was probably the most competent — intelligent, well educated, a linguist and an accomplished diplomat — but was ultimately unable to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome.

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Britannia: A History of Roman Britain / Sheppard Frere
Social, cultural and military history of Roman Britain to the 5th Century. A respected author examines the provincial institutions on the fringe of empire, many of which survived long after the withdrawal of the legions.

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Nero / Michael Grant
‘The last degenerate twig on the mighty tree of the Julian dynasty.’ After the defeat of Antiochus III in Greece by the Scipio brothers in 190 BCE, Rome fell under the sway of Hellenistic influences. The Republic, organised on militaristic lines, was seduced by the art, philosophy, luxury and democratic traditions of the older civilisation. The last was a factor in the reform movements and Social and Civil Wars that ended with the victory of Octavian at Actium; the cultural imports contributed to the increasing decadence of the aristocracy. The interests of Nero, emperor of the known world, lay in poetry and music rather than in administration, politics or military campaigns. This opened the door to the corruption of the regime by unscrupulous opportunists, whose brutality in achieving their ambitions matched the psychotic brutality of the emperor himself.

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Byzantium: The Early Centuries (Vol 1) / John Julius Norwich

Byzantium: The Apogee (Vol 2) / John Julius Norwich

Byzantium: Decline and Fall (Vol 3) / John Julius Norwich

The Emperor Constantine the Great began building his new, Christian, capital of Constantinople at the site of the ancient city of Byzantium in around 326 CE. Within 150 years the Western Roman Empire had ceased to exist. Byzantium continued as the capital of the Eastern Empire, for long clinging tenaciously to its claim to the ancient Imperium. The following centuries saw major religious conflicts with the Roman Church, and a constant struggle against barbarian, Islamic and Crusading invaders. All this against the background of internal political intrigue and institutionalised fratricide. Constantinople finally fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

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The Legacy of Empire

Rome had profound influence on its neighbours before giving way to barbarian conglomerations in the west. Byzantium passed through centuries of slow attrition as Islam gnawed away at its ever-shrinking borders. The western world was by now on the threshold of the medieval.

The Barbarian West / J M Wallace-Hadrill
500-1000 CE. Goths, Lombards, Merovingians, Carolingians and the Holy Roman Empire.

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A History of the Arab Peoples / Albert Hourani
Monumental work beginning with the eruption of militant Islam out of the Hejaz into the former Roman, Byzantine and Persian provinces. Traces the history and influence of the Arabs down to the 21st century. The book has been updated since the death of the author to cover the period leading up to the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

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Alexandria: A History and a Guide / E M Forster
A travel guide with a strong historical slant, well worth the reading. Of the 7th century Arab invasion: ‘Though they had no intention of destroying her, they destroyed her, as a child might a watch. She never functioned again properly for over 1,000 years.’ From the author of A Passage to India, the screen adaptation of which was director David Leane’s last film (1984 qv).

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The Library of Alexandria / Roy MacLeod

The Great Library of Alexandria was in its day the largest repository of Greek, Hebrew, Mesopotamian and Egyptian literature in the world. The city itself became a centre of cosmopolitan scholarship and the destruction of the Library must be accounted one of the greatest cultural tragedies of the late ancient world.

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The Ottoman Centuries / Lord Kinross
The emergence from obscurity of the Ottoman Turks, their conquest of Byzantium, their territorial expansion and their involvement in European power politics, down to the dissolution of empire following the First World War.

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