Killing for the Republic

Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman Way of War

By: Steele Brand

Narrated by: Tom Parks

Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

The year 146 BC marked the brutal end to the Roman Republic's 118-year struggle for the western Mediterranean. Breaching the walls of their great enemy, Carthage, Roman troops slaughtered countless citizens, enslaved those who survived, and leveled the 700-year-old city. That same year in the east, Rome destroyed Corinth and subdued Greece. Over little more than a century, Rome's triumphant armies of citizen-soldiers had shocked the world by conquering all of its neighbors.

How did armies made up of citizen-soldiers manage to pull off such a major triumph? And what made the republic so powerful? In Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand explains how Rome transformed average farmers into ambitious killers capable of conquering the entire Mediterranean. Rome instilled something violent and vicious in its soldiers, making them more effective than other empire builders. Unlike the Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians, it fought with part-timers. Examining the relationship between the republican spirit and the citizen-soldier, Brand argues that Roman republican values and institutions prepared common men for the rigors and horrors of war.

©2019 Johns Hopkins University Press (P)2019 Tantor

Interesting story, vexing format

I teach Latin so know a good bit about Roman culture and this found the story interesting. However, I found the style of narration vexing as it was often hard to tell when he was quoting a source and when the author’s words resumed. I also didn’t care for how he pronounced many of the names; some were quite jarringly different from their usual pronunciations.

All in all, a good book, but one I wish I’d read rather than listened to.

boring

I love history and haven't found to many history books or subject uninteresting but this book bored me to death.

Not that much Rome

This book is basically a self masturbatory look at America rather that a look into citizen soldiers of the Roman Republic. So much of this book is dedicated to the idealized and mythologized early American period and does almost nothing in Ancient Rome without saying how Good 'Ol Murica copied it or how they would look at it. move along if you want anything other than a fantasy novel.