The Modern Scholar: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

I really didn't know that much about the Roman Empire before listening to this lecture. It provided a fairly good survey from the end of the Republic to the start of the Byzantine Empire.

It was an engaging listen, with lots of interesting events. My only real complaint is that occasionally it gets bogged down in the names and people rather than concentrating on the big picture. But still the overall events still shine through.

I'd recommend this lecture to other people.

Professor Maddens' lectures tend to be concise, to the point and enjoyable, it's certainly a lot easier than reading or listening to Decline and Fall of Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons. Having said that, because of the time constraint, he has had to skip a lot of details. I'd suggest trying Cyril Robinson's work to supplement this course.

Although the topic of this lecture series is the Decline and Fall, the lectures actually cover the entire period of the Roman Empire, from the end of the Republic, to the end of the succeeding Empire. Professor Madden's lecture style is smooth and fairly fast-paced, and he has an interesting theory about why the Roman Empire eventually collapsed. I'm a Roman history buff, and I really enjoyed listening to these lectures. Definitely well-worth my time!

Professor Madden is well verse in the subject matter that he is presenting. The lectures follow a logical order that is detailed with facts often not covered in other lecture series. The history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is impressive and easy to follow. Professor Madden makes the history come alive to the listener. I highly recommend this series of lectures on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the beginner or the expert on the subject. I will certainly be buying another one of Professor Madden's Lecture audio books.

This book is really like attending a class lecture--replete with slips and the normal repetitions one hears in lectures. I'm not sure it's a great start if you know nothing about Roman history. But as a refresher course or an overview if you plan to read more, it's pretty good. There are a couple of annoying pronunciations (Pompey gets pronounced as if it were the city Pompeii). They are good lectures--interesting and easy to listen to.

It surely doesn't go into details about everything but that's a good thing. Good narration. Makes you feel you are in a classroom listening to a great teacher.

Unconnected, disorganized vignettes, truncated and riddled with errors and misspeaks. The reviewer who mentioned the lack of any "big picture" is entirely correct. Modern Scholar should pull this one.

The lectures start out reviewing some ideas that have been suggested over the years for the fall of Rome: maybe it was the decadence or the rise of Christianity or the Barbarians... A lot of these are rejected on the argument that they apply equally well to the Eastern Empire, which lasted till 1453, as to the Western, which fell in 476. I find this argument less than fully convincing, but I was willing to accept it provisionally, awaiting the author's preferred thesis to be given at the end. Except he never does give one.

Instead the book is basically a litany of emperors and generals. The sort of thing that perhaps you're required to know for the test if you're studying to be a card-carrying historian, but which is of limited interest or use to the rest of us. The lectures start (following the part where he throws out and rejects various theories) with Julius Caeser and the Julio-Caludians, and if you know at least the outlines of that part of the story, as many of us do, things start to get pretty boring. But then he passes through that bunch and there's 4-5 more hours of so-and-so succeeded so-and-so, and you realize that hey, this never ending parade of emperors actually continued for like 400 years and was pretty well recorded. You also realize there's a reason no one's ever made an "I, Pupienus". Seriously, there's dozens of these guys you've never heard of and don't care about.

And Madden is just not a great lecturer. He's not terrible, but he seems to sigh a lot, which made me feel like he was disappointed in me as a listener. More likely, he was bored with his own story, because it's boring.

The unfulfilled promise of this program is to get at the deep causes of the fall of Rome. Madden's basic story is that the fundamental failure in Rome was a constitutional one, failing to specify the order of succession, which led perpetual rivalries between claimants to the throne. Perhaps, but given his own dismissal of stories that work just as well in the east as west, he never really explains why this explanation should pass that test. I'd also like to hear what other historians say on this topic; Madden mentions Gibbons, but doesn't say much about him, or anyone else's analysis. Basically, I kept waiting for the analysis lecture to come, and it simply doesn't.

It has a much broader focus, but if you're interested in this topic in general, let me suggest Ian Morris' recent book "Why the West Rules for Now". That one may leave you not knowing the Latin names of all the trees--err, emperors--but at least it acknowledges the forest.

The "Decline and Fall of Rome" is not so much a book. It is a presentation of 14 lectures about the Roman Empire spreading from 27 B.C. to 476 A.D. Prof. Thomas F. Madden from Saint Louisville University, gives the listener an overview of the different emperors starting with the fall of the Roman Republic. In a certain sense the lectures highlights a series of falls which led to the decline of Rome.

I found the lectures very informative. It gives you and overview of a very important time in the history of mankind. In more than one way it is also in this time that the seed of Western Civilisation is planted.

Madden has a way of making difficult ideas and concepts easily graspable. I enjoyed listening to him. However, he did "uhm" quite a lot and sometimes ended his sentences abruptly as if he doesn't know what to say about a certain idea he wants to convey.

The pdf course guide is excellent and doesn't only help you to recap what you've listened to, it has good suggestions for further reading.

I would recommend this recording of prof. Madden's lectures to anyone who wants to know more about the Roman Empire and its emperors. The contents is well structured and easily accessible.

Professor Madden initiated my interest in Audiobooks after listening to this tittle. Now I own all tittles narrated by him, including Empire of Gold, the continuation of this title.