Ancient Rome: An Introductory History

Front Cover
University of Oklahoma Press, 2012 M11 28 - 320 pages

The events and personalities of ancient Rome spring to life in this history, from its founding in 753 B.C. to the death of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 180.

Paul A. Zoch presents, in contemporary language, the history of Rome and the stories of its protagonists?such as Romulus and Remus, Horatius, and Nero-which are so often omitted from more specialized studies.

With an eye detail, Zoch guides his readers through the military campaigns and political developments that shaped Rome’s rise from a small Italian city to the greatest imperial power the world had ever known. We witness the long struggle against the enemy city of Carthage. We follow Caesar as he campaigns in Britain, and we observe the ebb and flow of Rome’s fortunes in the Hellenistic East. Writing with the belief that such stories contain moral lessons that are relevant today, Zoch presents a narrative that is both entertaining and informative. An afterword takes the history to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in A.D. 476.

 

Contents

Chapter 1 A Linguistic Introduction
3
Chapter 2 Romes Origins according to the Ancients
6
Chapter 3 Romulus and Remus Found Rome
9
Chapter 4 Kings after Romulus
15
Chapter 5 Tarquins Coup dEtat and the End of the Monarchy
27
Senatus Populusque Romanus
32
Chapter 7 Traitors and Heroes of the Early Republic
40
Chapter 8 Class Conflict in Rome
50
The Beginning of the End of the Res Publica
141
Chapter 17 The War against Jugurtha and the Rise of Marius
149
Chapter 18 The Italian Wars and the Career of Sulla
155
Chapter 19 The Rise of Pompey
165
Chapter 20 The First Triumvirate
175
Chapter 21 Civil War
191
Chapter 22 Renewed Civil War and the Rise of Octavian
211
The Principate
227

Chapter 9 Coriolanus Cincinnatus and Camillus
58
Chapter 10 The Gauls Sack Rome
67
Chapter 11 The Wars with the Samnites
76
Chapter 12 King Pyrrhus Pyrrhic Victories
86
Chapter 13 The First Punic War
94
Chapter 14 The Second Punic War
100
Chapter 15 Rome Encounters the East
117
Chapter 24 The JulioClaudian Emperors
240
Chapter 25 The Flavian Emperors
259
Chapter 26 The Culmination of the Pax Romana
265
The Disintegration of the Empire
281
Bibliography
285
Index
289
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About the author (2012)

Paul A. Zoch, a Houston-based educator with thirty-one years of experience teaching Latin and ancient Roman history, is the author of Doomed to Fail: The Built-In Defects of American Education.

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