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A Brief History
   of Ancient Rome


D. Brendan Nagle
University of Southern California

Available Now!
ISBN: 978-1-59738-092-8
340 pages / paper / $39.95
E-book is also available

Table of Contents with sample chapters

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This 340-page brief edition of Brendan Nagle's ANCIENT ROME covers the history of Rome from its legendary founding in 753 B.C. to A.D. 732, when the Frankish successors of Rome turned back the conquering Arabs at the Battle of Tours. Beautifully illustrated with full-color figures, original maps, and photos, this text is friendly to your students' budgets with a low price of $39.95.

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The events and chronologies are subordinated to a series of master narrative questions: 

  • Why did Rome succeed in creating an empire based on the city-state when every other Mediterranean city-state that attempted to do so failed?
  • Why did the government of the Republic collapse after its stunning military success allowed it to conquer most of the Mediterranean and a good portion of Europe
  • Even more astonishingly, how did the Republic, phoenix-like, revive and recreate itself? 
  • And finally, in the fourth century A.D., how did Rome redesign itself under pressure from a resurgent Persia, the numerous warrior bands, and migrating peoples of the West?

Special attention is given to the early growth of Rome in Italy; the art and architectural program of Augustus; and the factors that sustained the Roman Empire; the world of Late Antiquity, the rise of Abrahamic religions; and the revolutionary role of monotheism in the culture of the classical world.