The ancient Romans' story down to 264 B.C. can be made credible by stripping away their later myths and inventions to show how their national character shaped their destiny.
After many generations of scholarly study, consensus is clear: the account in writers like Livy is not to be trusted because their aims were different from ours in history-writing. They wanted their work to be both improving and diverting. It should grow out of the real past, yes, but if that reality couldn't be recovered, or was uncertain, their art did not forbid invention. It more than tolerated dramatic...
The ancient Romans' story down to 264 B.C. can be made credible by stripping away their later myths and inventions to show how their national chara...
This study, first published in 1969, presents an astute and authoritative depiction of the cultural, religious and secular developments which shook the Roman world in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries AD, much of it under the auspices of the Emperor, Constantine the Great.
Constantine was at the heart of the transition from pagan antiquity to Christendom. Rejecting the collegiate imperial system of his recent predecessors, he reunited the two halves of the Empire; established Christianity as its formal religion; and shifted the capital of the Roman world definitively to the city...
This study, first published in 1969, presents an astute and authoritative depiction of the cultural, religious and secular developments which shook...
