The Rise of Rome, : The making of the World’s Greatest Empire
Anthony Everitt

Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, 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 and power corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic , and Rome was left triumphant everywhere except within its 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: they include the legendary Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington; the brilliant general Scipio Africanus who defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal; and Julius Caesar who finally brought down the Republic.

Here too are the intellectual leaders whose ideas on justice and liberty continue to inform our political discourse today.