Roman Empire

At the close of the third century B.C., Rome and the Seleucid Empire confronted one another in the neutral ground of disputatious Greece. By E. Badian.

Peter Green meets the satirists of the Roman Empire, and is presented with a picture of a world in corruption and decline. Yet the Empire outlasted its bitterest critics by several hundred years.

Much malignant gossip has gathered around the enigmatic personality of the second Roman Emperor whose peaceful reign extended from AD 14 until AD 37.

Defeated enemies, as history shows, may become devoted allies. Once Rome had seemed the tyrant of Italy. After the successful outcome of the Social War, writes Harold Mattingly, her Italian neighbours took their places at her side, ready to assist her in the gigantic task of government.

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the Roman conquest of Jerusalem marked a crisis in the early development of Christianity, and paved the way for a general acceptance of the Pauline message.

Both before and after the fall of the Republic, Roman satirists give us an extraordinarily vivid picture of the society in which they lived, with its materialism, its opportunism, its unceasing pursuit of power and wealth.

Michael Grant offers the tale of Rome's most infamous emperor from both his fans and detractors.

Charles Johnston describes how, during the latter half of the fourth century, one of the last of the Roman poets was appointed by Valentinian I, Emperor of the West, to undertake the education of his hopeful son Gratian.

The grandson of the famous scholar Ausonius, Paulinus was a cultivated country gentleman, who lived to see the final breakdown and disintegration of the Roman way of life. By Charles Johnston.

Michael Grant analyses Mithras and its importance to the ancients.