Coming in September:
At its greatest extent, the Roman Empire encompassed more than twenty-five modern-day countries, stretching at its greatest extent from the Irish Sea to Mesopotamia. It flourished for some 500 years and, around the time of Christ, made up at least 20 percent of the world’s population. It has shaped our politics and laws, language and numerals, calendar and architecture.
But what was Rome, who were the Romans, and why ultimately did the empire fall? Ranging across more than a thousand years, from the foundation myths of Romulus and Remus to the barbarian invasions, The Shortest History of Ancient Rome vividly explores the lives of murderous emperors, rebellious women, remarkable thinkers, fugitive slaves and persecuted Christians.
Purchase from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Booktopia (Australia) or Indigo (Canada)
Praise for The Shortest History of Ancient Rome
‘King achieves an uncommonly dense work of compression, telescoping events and fashioning brief character studies in surveying the arc of ancient Rome… from the mythic folktale of Romulus and Remus to the fall of empire… We get the emperors and chroniclers, generals and legions, builders and artists, stabilizers and insurrectionists, the mad and the bad responsible for rise and ruin—all written with a historian’s attention to detail and the fluid storytelling of a novelist.’—Kirkus Reviews