You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Hadrian's reign (AD 117-138) was a watershed in the history of the Roman Empire. Hadrian abandoned his predecessor Trajan's eastern conquests - Mesopotamia and Armenia - trimmed down the lands beyond the lower Danube, and constructed new demarcation lines in Germany, North Africa, and most famously Hadrian's Wall in Britain, to delimit the empire. The emperor Hadrian, a strange and baffling figure to his contemporaries, had a many-sided personality. Insatiably ambitious, and a passionate Philhellene, he promoted the 'Greek Renaissance' extravagantly. But his attempt to Hellenize the Jews, including the outlawing of circumcision, had disastrous consequences, and his 'Greek' love of the beauti...
The Roman Government of Britain contains biographical entries on the hundreds of known Romans who served in Britain from AD 43 to 409. Evidence for imperial visits is discussed, and the Roman career-structure is explained. All the ancient evidence is quoted in full and translated, making this book the fullest available collection of sources for Britain under Roman rule.
Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor who ruled the Roman Empire between AD 161 and 180, is one of the best recorded individuals from antiquity. Even his face became more than usually familiar: the imperial coinage displayed his portrait for over 40 years, from the clean-shaven young heir of Antonius to the war-weary, heavily bearded ruler who died at his post in his late fifties. His correspondence with his tutor Fronto, and even more the private notebook he kept for his last ten years, the Meditations, provides a unique series of vivid and revealing glimpses into the character and peoccupations of this emporer who spent many years in terrible wars against northern tribes. In this accessible and scholarly study, Professor Birley paints a portrait of an emporer who was human and just - an embodiment of the pagan virtues of Rome.
Anthony R. Birley, a leading authority in the field of Roman prosopography and well known for his biographies of the emperors Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus, was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester from 1974-1990 and at the Heinrich Heine University, Duesseldorf from 1990 until retirement in 2002. Friends, colleagues and pupils have offered him A Roman Miscellany, on a rich variety of topics relating to the Roman Empire, a Festschrift for an outstanding scholar. Eight contributions are in English, one - an excerpt from a historical novel - is in French, the rest are in German. The book is edited by Birleys last three Duesseldorf pupils. After a short ...
Garrison life at Vindolanda
In this, the only biography of Septimius Severus in English, Anthony R. Birley explors how 'Roman' or otherwise this man was and examines his remarkable background and career. Severus was descended from Phoenician settlers in Tripolitania, and his reign, AD 193-211, represents a key point in Roman history. Birley explores what was African and what was Roman in Septimius' background, given that he came from an African city. He asks whether Septimius was a 'typical cosmopolitan bureaucrat', a 'new Hannibal on the throne of Caesar' or 'principle author of the decline of the Roman Empire'?
One of the most controversial of all works to survive from ancient Rome, the Augustan History is our main source of information about the Roman emperors from 117 to 284 AD. Written in the late fourth century by an anonymous author, it is an enigmatic combination of truth, invention and humour. This volume contains the first half of the History, and includes biographies of every emperor from Hadrian to Heliogabalus - among them the godlike Marcus Antonius and his grotesquely corrupt son Commodus. The History contains many fictitious (but highly entertaining) anecdotes about the depravity of the emperors, as the author blends historical fact and faked documents to present our most complete - albeit unreliable - account of the later Roman Caesars.
Picture of the times and daily life of individual Britons during the more than 400 years that Rome occupied their island province.
Undeniably one of Rome's most important historians, Tacitus was also one of its most gifted. Ideal for college students, this newly revised edition of two seminal works on Imperial Rome is now available.