Ancient Rome
The Rise and Fall of An Empire
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Ancient Rome
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Narrated by:
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Chris MacDonnell
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Written by:
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Simon Baker
About this listen
This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid.
From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history: the spectacular collapse of the "free" republic, the birth of the age of the "Caesars", the violent suppression of the strongest rebellion against Roman power, and the bloody civil war that launched Christianity as a world religion.
At the heart of this account are the dynamic, complex, and flawed characters of some of the most powerful rulers in history: men such as Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero, and Constantine. Putting flesh on the bones of these distant, legendary figures, Baker looks beyond the dusty, toga-clad caricatures and explores their real motivations and ambitions.
©2006 Simon Baker; foreword by Mary Beard copyright 2006 by Woodlands Books Ltd (P)2016 TantorWhat the critics say
What listeners say about Ancient Rome
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Matt
- 2019-02-12
Enjoyable, but inconsistent and ramshackle
First of all, I really liked this book as a source of entertainment. In terms of information? It did provide a lot of good material and, on the balance, was nicely written. It can be useful for laying a foundation, when combined with other sources, for a more detailed study.
The issue I had was that it was inconsistent in its approach. Given that it is attempting to cover over 700 years of history, one can expect that the author will concentrate on specific events and people. It just fails to adopt any unifying framework or regular formula for each subject. It will gloss over the details of the Gracchi (skipping Gaius almost completely), then go into the weeds for Nero. It will give a summary account of Caesars conquests of Gaul, then give a play by play of the Jewish revolt at the tactical level. Sulla vs Marius was almost a footnote. Marcus Aurelius is mentioned ... only. The rule of Constantine was fairly well handled for a book of this size.
This is a book version of a mass market BBC broadcast, so that is what you can expect. You can do better with Youtube.
The narrator was very good in tone and tempo. One minor voice patch was detected. Oh, well.
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