Rome Memoir

For the first time in audio, Marguerite Yourcenar's masterpiece—an extraordinary novel based on the life of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Written in the form of a testamentary letter from the Emperor Hadrian to his successor, the youthful Marcus Aurelius, this work is as extraordinary for its...

The War of the Three Gods is a military history of the Near and Middle East in the seventh century - with its chief focus on the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius (AD 610-641) - a pivotal and dramatic time in world history. The Eastern Roman Empire was brought to the very brink of extinction by the Sassanid Persians before Heraclius managed to inflict a crushing defeat on the Sassanids with a desperate, final gambit.

From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land, a "dazzling" (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) travel memoir about art, new parenthood, and adventures in Rome. Anthony Doerr has received...

This epic chronicle by Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) continues with the lives of great Grecians and Romans. These biographies of the men who created the ancient world are brought to life in this new, high-quality recording. Legends such as Caesar, Alexander, Cicero, Demosthenes, and many others come alive as their politics, economy, and their individual stories play out in the time of the ancients. This translation is by John Dryden and is considered by scholars to be the quintessential translation.

As Hillaire Belloc explains it, one fine day while walking about the town in northern France where he was born, he suddenly decided to take a pilgrimage to Rome. Not just any pilgrimage, mind you. He not only decided to walk the whole way, but he decided to make a beeline for the Holy City, doing everything possible to avoid leaving the straight path.

From Venetian canals to Vatican conclaves, New York Times correspondent Jason Horowitz takes you on a tour of the real Italy. Italy’s deep history, stunning landscapes and glorious food have uniquely captured our imagination. In The Italian Job, Jason Horowitz, a longtime Rome bureau chief for...

The Twelve Caesars was written based on the information of eyewitnesses and public records. It conveys a very accurate picture of court life in Rome and contains some of the raciest and most salacious material to be found in all of ancient literature. The writing is clear, simple and easy to understand, and the numerous anecdotes of juicy scandal, bitter court intrigue, and murderous brigandage easily hold their own against the most spirited content of today's tabloids.

This year Christians worldwide will celebrate the 1700th anniversary of Constantine's conversion and victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. No Roman emperor had a greater impact on the modern world than did Constantine. The reason is not simply that he converted to Christianity but that he did so in a way that brought his subjects along after him. Indeed, this major new biography argues that Constantine's conversion is but one feature of a unique administrative style that enabled him to take control of an empire beset by internal rebellions and external threats by Persians and Goths.

Nerone è uno degli imperatori romani più noti al grande pubblico. Accusato fin dai tempi antichi di essere il responsabile del grande incendio che devastò Roma nel 64 d.C., nel corso dei secoli è diventato uno dei personaggi più negativi della storia: assassino sanguinario, esteta volubile, uomo assetato di potere, schiavo delle passioni, schiacciato dal peso di una madre troppo opprimente... Gli storici cristiani arrivarono perfino a descriverlo come l'Anticristo. Ma siamo sicuri che le cose siano andate così? Cosa sappiamo davvero di Nerone oggi al di là degli stereotipi?

Contained here is Julius Caesar's own account of his military adventures in Gaul at the head of the Roman army, uniquely presented in Caesar's first-person perspective (rather than as a third-person narrative as in the original Latin). Included are seven sections ("books") of the Gallic War, each encompassing one year of Caesar's battles and intrigues; though there is an eighth book, it is generally accepted to have been written by another general, shortly after Caesar's death in 44 BCE.

Septimius Severus was Rome's black emperor. Born in the blistering heat of a North African spring in Leptis Magna AD 145, he died in the freezing cold of a northern British winter in York in AD 211. A giant of an emperor, whose career can be counted in superlatives, Severus was in power at the height of Rome's might. He led the largest army to ever campaign in Britain, comprising 50,000 men, part of a Roman military establishment which peaked at 33 legions under his rule. Born into the richest family, in the richest part of the Roman Empire, Severus monumentalised his rule across the empire.

Gaio Giulio Cesare è il personaggio più famoso della storia di Roma antica, nonché uno dei più noti condottieri di tutti i tempi. In suo onore vennero chiamati "Cesare" gli imperatori di Roma, gli imperatori tedeschi e gli zar russi. Eppure Cesare non fu mai imperatore o re. Nel corso degli ultimi, tempestosi anni della Roma repubblicana, fu cinque volte console, pontefice massimo per quasi vent'anni e dittatore.

“A lyrical and moving exploration of the ways in which the heart governs even the pursuit of a life of the mind, this is a book for anyone who has ever loved Rome, as well as anyone who shares the experience of having found, in an unfamiliar history, their own unexpected home.” —Rebecca...

Galen of Pergamum (A.D. 129-ca. 216) began his remarkable career tending to wounded gladiators in provincial Asia Minor. Later in life he achieved great distinction as one of a small circle of court physicians to the family of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, at the very heart of Roman society. Susan Mattern's The Prince of Medicine offers the first authoritative biography in English of this brilliant, audacious, and profoundly influential figure.

An extravagant neo-baroque artist and outspoken proto-feminist, the mercurial Romana Laura Anzi survived Mussolini and the Nazis, risked her life carrying messages for the Italian Resistance, and wound up marrying a wisecracking bespectacled GI journalist who fought in the Italian Campaign then stayed on in Rome to woo her. Romana was the author’s mother. The GI—Charles E. Downie, Jr.—was his father.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Sunday Times number one bestselling author returns to Ancient Rome in his latest thriller – coming August 2026. Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has...

Even after Greek power waned, the Romans borrowed Greek culture, so it should come as little surprise that various Greeks continued to be influential in antiquity. In fact, if people in the third century CE were asked which religious or philosophical figure from the first century CE was most likely to found or inspire a global religion that would attract millions of followers and last for centuries, they would not have answered Jesus of Nazareth.

Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.

Two works by the Roman historian, Tacitus. Agricola is a portrait of Julius Agricola, a governor of Roman Britain, and the first surviving account of the geography, climate, and peoples of Britain. The German tribes of Northern Europe are discussed in Germania.

Over 1500 years before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had its own in the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks. An engineer, mathematician, physicist, scientist and astronomer all rolled into one, Archimedes has been credited for making groundbreaking discoveries, some of which are undoubtedly fact and others that are almost certainly myth.