The History of Ancient Rome

By: Garrett G. Fagan, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Garrett G. Fagan

Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Even today, the influence of Ancient Rome is indelible, with Europe and the world owing this extraordinary empire a huge cultural debt in almost every important category of human endeavor, including art, architecture, engineering, language, literature, law, and religion. At the peak of its power, Rome's span was vast. In the regional, restless, and shifting history of continental Europe, the Roman Empire stands as a towering monument to scale and stability, unified in politics and law, stretching from the sands of Syria to the moors of Scotland. And it stood for almost 700 years.

In this series of 48 spirited lectures, you'll see how a small village of shepherds and farmers rose to tower over the civilized world of its day and left a permanent mark on history. In telling Rome's riveting story, Professor Fagan draws on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, including recent historical and archaeological scholarship, to introduce the fascinating tale of Rome's rise and decline, including the famous events and personalities that have become so familiar:

• Horatius at the bridge
• Hannibal crossing the Alps during Rome's life-or-death war with Carthage
• Caesar being assassinated before a statue of his archrival Pompey
• The doomed lovers Antony and Cleopatra
• The mad and venal emperors Nero and Caligula
• The conversion of Constantine.

The course also addresses one of history's greatest questions: Why did the Roman Empire fall? And you'll learn why most modern scholars believe that the empire did not "fall" at all, but, rather, changed into something very different - the less urbanized, more rural, early medieval world.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1999 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1999 The Great Courses

Incredibly Interesting

Prof. Fagan tells it in a great narrative way to make you want to keeps coming back for more.

P.S. look up "ad hoc" if you don't know what it means, he'll say it a lot.

Great Narrative of the Story of Rome

OVERVIEW

I consider myself fairly well versed in Roman history, but my knowledge could be seen as vignette in nature, with gaps between major events and characters. This course helped me bridge those gaps together to have a more complete view on the empire as a whole.

SCOPE OF THE SERIES

It covers from the foundations of Rome (both myth and archeological evidence to the fall of the Western Empire). This being said, the vast majority of the lessons cover the classical period through Augustus. With such a large timeperiod, the instructor acknowledged multiple times that he could not go into detail on many issues and topics.

INSTRUCTOR

The instructor was well versed and balanced in his interpretation of evidence, often presenting various opinions of other historians and weighing their merits and detractors. The Irish accent was quite pleasant as well.

MISCELLANEOUS

This series is best accompanied by McCullough's "First Man in Rome", Rome II: Total War, and red wine.

Excellent overview of Rome

Very well done. It brought into perspective many stories and legends surrounding the mystic of Ancient Rome. Well worth the time and investment.

great

i spent a lot of time trying to find a good summary of ancient Roman history and this was a great choice. great narrator gave thorough perspective of events while being very clear about rhe quality of information behind the narrative. he also would take the time to describe, where relevant, multiple interpretations where the information is ambiguous.

note the narrative ends just before 500 AD with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Highly Recommend

Highly informative lecture on ancient to early Imperial Rome. Between this and Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", which was a text recommended by this very lecture, I learned a dazzling amount of information on one of antiquity's greatest civilizations; enough to unilaterally impress anyone I speak to on the subject of Rome. The lecturer does have a bit of a tendency to repeat himself however, which is the only real complaint I could make about this audio book, but it isn't major

A Good Overview

The history of Ancient Rome is impossible to convey in any detail if you are only given 48 half hour lectures. All you can give is a detailed overview. Fagan does a good job of that.

Well worth a listen

For those who are interested in Ancient Rome it's well worth listening to. This gives a great overview of its history as well as many important smaller aspects of Roman life, not just all the wars.

A wonderful journey

Professor Fagan is wonderful lecturer, and this is a fascinating course. His delivery is fantastic and there are even moments of humour here and there - truly rare in the Great Courses series. In fact, on more than one occasion he made a joke that was so funny I could hear the producers in the room burst out laughing in the background.

That being said, I did find my mind wandering a little in the last third of the course. This is simply because I prefer narrative history more than social history, which the last part of the course covers. This is a personal thing, of course, and not a reflection on the content or the lecturer.

If you also prefer narrative history I would recommend Professor Fagan's other course on the Emperors Of Rome above this one. But that doesn't mean I don't recommend this one, as I most certainly do.

Professor Fagan is excellent.

Professor Fagan is excellent at delivery what is all-in-all snapshots of historical events considering sociocultural biases, environmental pressures and more in shaping the contours of the administrative apparatus of Roman society which made the expansive empire possible and subsequently the maintenance of an republic impossible. Yet, his masterful manipulation of pace in introduction of concepts likely to be unfamiliar to those scholars untrained in the science of history.

Engaging history with good narrator

I never knew that there was both a monarchical Rome and a republic Rome that existed , nor that there were several civil wars that took place