by Baker, Simon
4. Ibid., 4; Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 158.
5. Ammianus Marcellinus, Book 31. 4.
6. Ibid., 12.
7. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 72–3.
8. Claudian, Against Rufinus, 2. 4–6; Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 217.
9. Zosimus, New History, Book 5, 29; Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 215–16.
10. Zosimus, New History, Book 5. 29. Zosimus was a sixth-century east Roman historian and Books 5 and 6 in his New History give, relatively speaking, the most comprehensive account of events leading up to the sack of Rome in AD 410; most importantly, he made use of the contemporary histories of Eunapius and Olympiodorus, which today are only fragmentary.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 32.
13. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 67–72.
14. Zosimus, New History, Book 5. 14.
15. Ibid., 33.
16. Ibid., 34.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 35.
19. Ibid., 34 (following Olympiodorus, Histories, fragment 17).
20. Ibid., 39.
21. Ibid., 40.
22. Ibid., 41.
23. Ibid., 45.
24. Ibid., 46.
25. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 227.
26. Zosimus, New History, Book 6. 1.
27. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 222.
28. Zosimus, New History, Book 5. 48.
29. Ibid., 48–9.
30. Ibid., 50.
31. Ibid., 51.
32. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 228–9.
33. Sozomen, Church History, Book 9. 9; an alternative story is told by Procopius in History of the Wars, Book 3. 2. 7–39.
34. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 227.
35. The sources for Alaric’s sack of Rome are collated in Pierre Courcelle, Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques (Paris, 1964), pp. 45–55.
36. Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, Book 1, preface.
37. Augustine, City of God, Book 2. 29; Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 229–32.
38. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 246–8.
39. Ibid., pp. 138–40.
FURTHER READING
FOREWORD
Woolf, G. (ed), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World (Cambridge, 2003)
Cornell, T. J.,Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (London, 1995)
Woolf, G., Et Tu Brute? The Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination (London, 2006)
Wyke, M., Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (New York; London, 1997)
Hopkins, Keith and Beard, Mary, The Colosseum (London, 2005)
Bowman, A. K., Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and its People (London, 2003)
ANCIENT SOURCES
Available in translation:
Cicero’s Letters to Atticus (London, 1978)
Cicero’s Letters to his Friends (London, 1978)
Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome (London, 1989)
Petronius and Seneca, The Satyricon, The Apocolocyntosis (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) (London, 1977)
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Oxford, 2000)
Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic (London, 1972)
Caesar, The Civil War (London, 1967)
Josephus, The Jewish War (London, 1981)
SEVEN HILLS OF ROME
Jones, Peter and Sidwell, Keith (eds), The World of Rome: An Introduction to Roman Culture, (Cambridge, 1997)
Woolf, G. (ed), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World (Cambridge, 2003)
Hopkins, Keith, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978)
Griffin, Jasper, Virgil (London, 2001)
Jenkyns, Richard, Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History, Times, Names, and Places (Oxford, 1998)
ANCIENT SOURCES
For Rome’s early history see the following Penguin translations:
Polybius, Histories: The Rise of the Roman Empire (London, 1979)
Livy, The Early History of Rome (Bks 1–5) (London, 2002)
Livy, Rome and Italy (Bks 6–10) (London, 1982)
For Virgil, see:
Georgics (Oxford, 2006) and The Aeneid (London, 1990)
I REVOLUTION
The most accessible narrative account of the life of Tiberius Gracchus can be found in:
Richardson, Keith: Daggers in the Forum: The Revolutionary Lives and Violent Deaths of the Gracchus Brothers (London, 1976).
Other key works are:
Astin, A. E., Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford, 1967)
Stockton, David, The Gracchi (Oxford, 1979)
Astin, A.E.; Walbank, F.W.; Frederiksen, M.W.; Ogilvie, R.M. (eds), Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 8: ‘Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 BC’ (Cambridge, 1989)
Beard, Mary and Crawford, Michael, Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations (London, 1999)
Brunt, P. A., Italian Manpower (Oxford 1971)
ANCIENT SOURCES
For the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean see:
Polybius, Histories: The Rise of the Roman Empire (London, 1979) (selected excerpts)
Livy, The War with Hannibal (Bks 21–30) (London, 1970)
Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean (Bks 31–45) (London, 1976)
In Loeb Classical Library edition see: Polybius, The Histories (Cambridge, Mass., 1922–27)
Appian, Roman History (Cambridge, Mass., 1912–13) both of which give the full Greek text and translation.
For accounts of the lives of Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus see:
Plutarch, Makers of Rome (London, 1965)
Appian, The Civil Wars (London, 1996)
All the primary sources relating to the Gracchus brothers have been usefully collated in:
Stockton, David, From The Gracchi To Sulla: Sources for Roman History, 133–80 BC (London, 1981)
II CAESAR
The most accessible, well-researched and exciting narrative of the fall of the Roman republic can be found in:
Holland, Tom, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (London, 2003)
Two authoritative biographies of Caesar are:
Gelzer, Matthias, Caesar, Politician and Statesman (Oxford, 1968)
Meier, Christian, Caesar (London, 1996)
Other key works for the late Republic are:
Beard, Mary and Crawford, Michael, Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations (London, 1999)
Weinstock, Stefan, Divus Julius (Oxford, 1971)
Crook, J.A.; Lintott, Andrew; Rawson, Elizabeth (eds) Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 9: ‘The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146–43 BC’ (Cambridge, 1989)
ANCIENT SOURCES
There is a wealth of ancient sources for this period of Roman history. For Caesar’s writings see:
Caesar, The Gallic War (Oxford, 1996)
Caesar, The Civil War (London, 1967)
For the contemporary letters of Cicero and his correspondents see:
Cicero’s Letters to Atticus (London, 1978)
Cicero’s Letters to his Friends (London, 1978)
Cicero, Selected Letters (London, 1986) (one volume)
For the ancient biographies of Pompey and Caesar see:
Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic (London, 1972)
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Oxford, 2000) (Julius Caesar)
Other ancient narratives of the last decades of the republic are:
Appian, The Civil Wars (London, 1996)
Lucan, Civil War (Oxford, 1999) (poetic account)
AUGUSTUS
Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew, Augustan Rome (Bristol, 1993)
Zanker, Paul, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988)
Beard, Mary; North, John; Price, Simon, Religions of Rome: Volume 1: ‘A History’ (Cambridge, 1998)
Galinsky, Karl (ed), The Cambridge Companion
to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge, 2005)
Bowman, A.K.; Champlin, Edward; Lintott, Andrew (eds), Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 10: ‘The Augustan Empire, 43 BC–AD 69’ (Cambridge, 1996)
Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution, (Oxford, 1939)
Price, S. R. F., Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1984)
Jones, Peter and Sidwell, Keith (eds), The World of Rome: An Introduction to Roman Culture, (Cambridge, 1997)
Barchiesi, Alessandro, The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse (Berkeley, 1997)
ANCIENT SOURCES
The key ancient texts for the life and rule of Augustus are:
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Oxford, 2000)
Cassius Dio, The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus (London, 1987)
For Augustus’s own account of his reign (My Achievements) see:
Res Gestae Divi Augusti, The Achievements of the Divine Augustus, (ed) P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore (Oxford, 1967) which has original text, translation and commentary
The primary sources on all aspects of Augustan age have been usefully collated in:
K. Chisolm and J. Ferguson (eds), Rome: The Augustan Age, A Source Book (Oxford, 1981)
III NERO
An excellent and authoritative account of the crisis of Nero’s reign is:
Griffin, Miriam T., Nero, The End of a Dynasty (London, 1984)
Two short introductions to Nero’s rule can be found in:
Shotter, David, Nero (London, 2005)
Malitz, Jürgen, Nero (Oxford, 2005)
Other key works are:
Grant, Michael, Nero (London, 1970)
Champlin, Edward, Nero (Cambridge, Mass.; London, 2003)
Beacham, Richard C., The Roman Theatre and its Audience (London, 1991)
Beacham, Richard C., Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome (New Haven; London, 1999)
ANCIENT SOURCES
For Tacitus’s works for this period see the following translations: Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome (London, 1989)
Tacitus, The Histories (London, 1972)
For Suetonius’s life of Nero see:
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Oxford, 2000)
For Cassius Dio’s account of Nero’s reign see Loeb Classical Library edition:
Cassius Dio, Roman History, Volume 8 (Cambridge Mass., 1925)
Seneca’s The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius can be found in:
Petronius and Seneca, The Satyricon, The Apocolocyntosis (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) (London, 1977)
IV REBELLION
The most authoritative accounts of the origins and context to the Roman war against the Jews in AD 66–70 are:
Goodman, Martin, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt Against Rome, AD 66–70 (Cambridge, 1987)
Goodman, Martin, The Roman World 44 BC–AD 180 (London, 1997)
A new history of the Romans and Jews between the first and the fourth centuries aimed at a general readership and by the same author was published in January 2007:
Goodman, Martin, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London, 2007)
Other key works are:
Millar, Fergus, The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass.; London, 1993)
Levick, Barbara, Vespasian (London, 1999)
Sanders, E. P., Judaism: Practice and Belief (S.C.M.P., 1992)
Faulkner, Neil, Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt Against Rome AD 66–73 (Stroud, 2002.)
Woolf, G. (ed), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World (Cambridge, 2003)
For the military aspect of the Jewish Revolt (and the Roman army in general) see:
Peddie, John, The Roman War Machine (Stroud, 1994)
Gilliver, Catherine, The Roman Art of War (Stroud, 1999)
Goldsworthy, Adrian, The Complete Roman Army (London, 2003)
Connolly, Peter, Greece and Rome At War (London, 1998)
ANCIENT SOURCES
For the key primary source see:
Josephus, The Jewish War (London, 1981)
For Josephus’s own account of his life see in Loeb Classical Library:
Josephus, The Life and Against Apion (Cambridge Mass., 1926)
For the account of the Roman civil war AD 68–69 (the ‘year of the four emperors’) see:
Tacitus, The Histories, (London, 1972)
For Suetonius’s lives of Vespasian and Titus as well as the emperors of AD 68–69, Galba, Otho and Vitellius, see:
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Oxford, 2000)
HADRIAN
An auhoritative and accessible new history of Hadrian’s rule is:
Danziger, Danny and Purcell, Nicholas, Hadrian’s Empire, When Rome Ruled the World (London, 2005)
Other useful works for this period,
Birley, Anthony, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (London, 1997)
Salway, Peter, A History of Roman Britain (Oxford, 2001)
Bowman, A. K., Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and its People (London, 2003)
Lane Fox, Robin, The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian (London, 2005)
Scarre, Christopher, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome (London, 1995)
Jones, Peter and Sidwell, Keith (eds), The World of Rome: An Introduction to Roman Culture, (Cambridge, 1997)
The Vindolanda tablets are also available online at:
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk
ANCIENT SOURCES
For Pliny’s letters see:
The Letters of the Younger Pliny (London, 1963)
For Pliny’s Panegyric of Trajan, see Loeb Classical Library edition:
Pliny, Letters and Panegyricus (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)
For Cassius Dio’s account of the reign of Hadrian see Loeb Classical Library edition:
Cassius Dio, Roman History, Volume 8 (Cambridge Mass., 1925)
For the Imperial History, Life of Hadrian, see:
Lives of the Later Caesars (London, 1976)
For Tacitus’s account of Roman Britain, see:
Tacitus, The Agricola and The Germania (London, 2003)
V CONSTANTINE
A good, authoritative introduction to this period of Roman history can be found in:
Cameron, Averil, The Later Roman Empire, AD 284–430 (London, 1993)
Other key works are:
Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity AD 200–1000 (Oxford, 2002.)
Brown, Peter, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, Wis.; London, 1992)
Odahl, Charles, Constantine and the Christian Empire (London, 2004)
Barnes, Timothy, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.; London, 1981)
Drake, H. A., Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, Md.; London, 2000)
Digeser, Elizabeth DePalma, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.; London, 1999)
Southern, Pat, The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (London, 2001)
Beard, Mary; North, John; Price, Simon, Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History (Cambridge, 1998)
Lenski, Noel (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (Cambridge, 2006)
Cambridge Ancient History, Volume Bowman, Alan; Cameron, Averil; Garnsey, Peter (eds), 12: ‘The Crisis of Empire, AD 193–337’, (ed) (Cambridge, 2005)
ANCIENT SOURCES
For Eusebius’s works see:
Eusebius, Life of Constantine, (ed) Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford, 1999) which has introduction, translation and commentary.
Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine (London, 1989)
For Lactantius’s works see:
Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors), (ed) J. L. Creed (Oxford, 1984) which has parallel Latin and English text.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, (
ed) Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey (Liverpool, 2003) which has original text, translation and commentary.
For Zosimus’s New History see:
Zosimus, Historia Nova, The Decline of Rome (San Antonio, 1967)
VI FALL
