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The Making of the World's Greatest Empire
Random House
August 2012
On Sale: August 7, 2012
512 pages
ISBN: 1400066638
EAN: 9781400066636
Kindle: B0067AMRD0
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
From Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of acclaimed
biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, comes a
riveting, magisterial account of Rome and its remarkable
ascent from an obscure agrarian backwater to the greatest
empire the world has ever known.
Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in
the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become
the ancient world’s preeminent power. Everitt fashions the
story of Rome’s rise to glory into an erudite page-turner
filled with lasting lessons for our time. He chronicles the
clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the
politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome’s shrewd
strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects
was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning
empire. And he outlines the corrosion of constitutional
norms that accompanied Rome’s imperial expansion, as old
habits of political compromise gave way, leading to violence
and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power
corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome
was left triumphant everywhere except within its own borders.
Everitt paints indelible portraits of the great Romans—and
non-Romans—who left their mark on the world out of which the
mighty empire grew: Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington,
the very model of the patrician warrior/aristocrat; the
brilliant general Scipio Africanus, who turned back a
challenge from the Carthaginian legend Hannibal; and
Alexander the Great, the invincible Macedonian conqueror who
became a role model for generations of would-be Roman
rulers. Here also are the intellectual and philosophical
leaders whose observations on the art of government and “the
good life” have inspired every Western power from antiquity
to the present: Cato the Elder, the famously incorruptible
statesman who spoke out against the decadence of his times,
and Cicero, the consummate orator whose championing of
republican institutions put him on a collision course with
Julius Caesar and whose writings on justice and liberty
continue to inform our political discourse today.
Rome’s decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but
the story of how the empire was won is every bit as
compelling. With The Rise of Rome, one of our most revered
chroniclers of the ancient world tells that tale in a way
that will galvanize, inform, and enlighten modern readers.
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