Download or read book Rome s Last Citizen written by Rob Goodman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of Marcus Cato the Younger -- Rome's bravest statesman, an aristocratic soldier, a Stoic philosopher, and staunch defender of sacred Roman tradition -- is rich with resonances for current politics and contemporary notions of freedom.

Download or read book Rome s Last Citizen written by Rob Goodman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cato, history's most famous foe of authoritarian power, was the pivotal political man of Rome; an inspiration to our Founding Fathers; and a cautionary figure for our times. He loved Roman republicanism, but saw himself as too principled for the mere politics that might have saved it. His life and lessons are urgently relevant in the harshly divided America—and world—of today. With erudition and verve, Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni turn their life of Cato into the most modern of biographies, a blend of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Game Change."—Howard Fineman, Editorial Director of The Huffington Post Media Group, NBC and MSNBC News Analyst, and New York Times bestselling author of The Thirteen American Arguments "A truly outstanding piece of work. What most impresses me is the book's ability to reach through the confusing dynastic politics of the late Roman Republic to present social realities in a way intelligible to the modern reader. Rome's Last Citizen entertainingly restores to life the stoic Roman who inspired George Washington, Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale. This is more than a biography: it is a study of how a reputation lasted through the centuries from the end of one republic to the start of another."—David Frum, DailyBeast columnist, former White House speech writer, and New York Times bestselling author of The Right Man Marcus Porcius Cato: aristocrat who walked barefoot and slept on the ground with his troops, political heavyweight who cultivated the image of a Stoic philosopher, a hardnosed defender of tradition who presented himself as a man out of the sacred Roman past—and the last man standing when Rome's Republic fell to tyranny. His blood feud with Caesar began in the chamber of the Senate, played out on the battlefields of a world war, and ended when he took his own life rather than live under a dictator. Centuries of thinkers, writers, and artists have drawn inspiration from Cato's Stoic courage. Saint Augustine and the early Christians were moved and challenged by his example. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, chose Cato to preside over the souls who arrive in Purgatory. George Washington so revered him that he staged a play on Cato's life to revive the spirit of his troops at Valley Forge. Now, in Rome's Last Citizen, Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni deliver the first modern biography of this stirring figure. Cato's life is a gripping tale that resonates deeply with our own turbulent times. He grappled with terrorists, a debt crisis, endemic political corruption, and a huge gulf between the elites and those they governed. In many ways, Cato was the ultimate man of principle—he even chose suicide rather than be used by Caesar as a political pawn. But Cato was also a political failure: his stubbornness sealed his and Rome's defeat, and his lonely end casts a shadow on the recurring hope that a singular leader can transcend the dirty business of politics. Rome's Last Citizen is a timeless story of an uncompromising man in a time of crisis and his lifelong battle to save the Republic.

Download or read book Cato the Younger written by Fred K. Drogula and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marcus Porcius Cato (the Younger) is most famous for being Julius Caesar's nemesis. His sustained antagonism was in large part responsible for pushing the Romans towards civil war. Yet Cato never wanted war even though he used the threat of violence against Caesar. This strategic gamble misfired as Caesar, instead of yielding, marched on Rome, hurling the Republic into a bloody civil war. Refusing to inhabit a world ruled by Caesar, Cato took his own life. Although the Roman historian Sallust identified Cato and Caesar as the two most outstanding men of their age, modern scholars have tended to dismiss Cato as a cantankerous conservative who, while colorful, was not a critical player in the events that overtook the Republic. This book, in providing a much-needed reliable biography of Cato, contradicts that assessment. In addition to being Caesar's adversary, Cato is an important and fascinating historical figure in his own right, and his career-in particular, his idiosyncrasies-shed light on the changing political culture of the late Republic. Cato famously reached into Rome's hallowed past and found mannerisms and habits to adopt that transformed him into the foremost champion of ancestral custom. Thus Cato did things that seemed strange and even bizarre such as wearing an old-fashioned tint of purple on his senatorial toga, refusing to ride a horse when on public business, and going about barefoot and without the usual tunic as an undergarment. His extreme conservatism-which became celebrated in later ages, especially in Enlightenment Europe and revolutionary America--was actually designed to give him a unique advantage in Roman politics. This is not to claim that he was insincere in his combative promotion of the mos maiorum (the way of the ancestors), but his political manipulation of the Romans' reverence for their traditions was masterful. By providing a new, detailed portrait of Cato, the book also presents a unique narrative of the age he helped shape and inadvertently destroy.

Download or read book Dying Every Day written by James Romm and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed classical historian, author of Ghost on the Throne (“Gripping . . . the narrative verve of a born writer and the erudition of a scholar” —Daniel Mendelsohn) and editor of The Landmark Arrian:The Campaign of Alexander (“Thrilling” —The New York Times Book Review), a high-stakes drama full of murder, madness, tyranny, perversion, with the sweep of history on the grand scale. At the center, the tumultuous life of Seneca, ancient Rome’s preeminent writer and philosopher, beginning with banishment in his fifties and subsequent appointment as tutor to twelve-year-old Nero, future emperor of Rome. Controlling them both, Nero’s mother, Julia Agrippina the Younger, Roman empress, great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus, sister of the Emperor Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Emperor Claudius. James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman. Romm writes that Seneca watched over Nero as teacher, moral guide, and surrogate father, and, at seventeen, when Nero abruptly ascended to become emperor of Rome, Seneca, a man never avid for political power became, with Nero, the ruler of the Roman Empire. We see how Seneca was able to control his young student, how, under Seneca’s influence, Nero ruled with intelligence and moderation, banned capital punishment, reduced taxes, gave slaves the right to file complaints against their owners, pardoned prisoners arrested for sedition. But with time, as Nero grew vain and disillusioned, Seneca was unable to hold sway over the emperor, and between Nero’s mother, Agrippina—thought to have poisoned her second husband, and her third, who was her uncle (Claudius), and rumored to have entered into an incestuous relationship with her son—and Nero’s father, described by Suetonius as a murderer and cheat charged with treason, adultery, and incest, how long could the young Nero have been contained? Dying Every Day is a portrait of Seneca’s moral struggle in the midst of madness and excess. In his treatises, Seneca preached a rigorous ethical creed, exalting heroes who defied danger to do what was right or embrace a noble death. As Nero’s adviser, Seneca was presented with a more complex set of choices, as the only man capable of summoning the better aspect of Nero’s nature, yet, remaining at Nero’s side and colluding in the evil regime he created. Dying Every Day is the first book to tell the compelling and nightmarish story of the philosopher-poet who was almost a king, tied to a tyrant—as Seneca, the paragon of reason, watched his student spiral into madness and whose descent saw five family murders, the Fire of Rome, and a savage purge that destroyed the supreme minds of the Senate’s golden age.

Download or read book Trajan written by Nicholas Jackson and published by Greenhill Books. This book was released on 2022-04-30 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the publication of this captivating biography, no such volume on Trajan’s life has been tailored to the general reader. The unique book illuminates a neglected period of ancient Roman history, featuring a comprehensive array of maps, illustrations, and photographs to help orientate and bring the text to life. Trajan rose from fairly obscure beginnings to become the emperor of Rome. He was born in Italica, an Italic settlement close to modern Seville in present-day Spain, and is the first Roman Emperor to be born outside of Rome. His remarkable rise from officer to general and then to emperor in just over 20 years reveals a shrewd politician who maintained absolute power. Trajan’s success in taking the Roman Empire to its greatest expanse is highlighted in this gripping biography. Trajan’s military campaigns allowed the Roman Empire to attain its greatest military, political and cultural achievements. The book draws on novel theories, recent evidence and meticulous research, including field visits to Italy, Spain, Germany and Romania to ensure accurate, vivid writing that transports the reader to Trajan’s territory.

Download or read book Armed Citizens written by Noah Shusterman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although much has changed in the United States since the eighteenth century, our framework for gun laws still largely relies on the Second Amendment and the patterns that emerged in the colonial era. America has long been a heavily armed, and racially divided, society, yet few citizens understand either why militias appealed to the founding fathers or the role that militias played in North American rebellions, in which they often functioned as repressive—and racist—domestic forces. In Armed Citizens, Noah Shusterman explains for a general reader what eighteenth-century militias were and why the authors of the Constitution believed them to be necessary to the security of a free state. Suggesting that the question was never whether there was a right to bear arms, but rather, who had the right to bear arms, Shusterman begins with the lessons that the founding generation took from the history of Ancient Rome and Machiavelli’s reinterpretation of those myths during the Renaissance. He then turns to the rise of France’s professional army during seventeenth-century Europe and the fear that it inspired in England. Shusterman shows how this fear led British writers to begin praising citizens’ militias, at the same time that colonial America had come to rely on those militias as a means of defense and as a system to police enslaved peoples. Thus the start of the Revolution allowed Americans to portray their struggle as a war of citizens against professional soldiers, leading the authors of the Constitution to place their trust in citizen soldiers and a "well-regulated militia," an idea that persists to this day.

Download or read book Rubicon written by Tom Holland and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid historical account of the social world of Rome as it moved from republic to empire. In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. Tom Holland’s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar’s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic and its bloody transformation into an empire. From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life. Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition.

Download or read book Killing for the Republic written by Steele Brand and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Rome's citizen-soldiers conquered the world—and why this militaristic ideal still has a place in America today. "For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans . . . succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history?"—Polybius The year 146 BC marked the brutal end to the Roman Republic's 118-year struggle for the western Mediterranean. Breaching the walls of their great enemy, Carthage, Roman troops slaughtered countless citizens, enslaved those who survived, and leveled the 700-year-old city. That same year in the east, Rome destroyed Corinth and subdued Greece. Over little more than a century, Rome's triumphant armies of citizen-soldiers had shocked the world by conquering all of its neighbors. How did armies made up of citizen-soldiers manage to pull off such a major triumph? And what made the republic so powerful? In Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand explains how Rome transformed average farmers into ambitious killers capable of conquering the entire Mediterranean. Rome instilled something violent and vicious in its soldiers, making them more effective than other empire builders. Unlike the Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians, it fought with part-timers. Examining the relationship between the republican spirit and the citizen-soldier, Brand argues that Roman republican values and institutions prepared common men for the rigors and horrors of war. Brand reconstructs five separate battles—representative moments in Rome's constitutional and cultural evolution that saw its citizen-soldiers encounter the best warriors of the day, from marauding Gauls and the Alps-crossing Hannibal to the heirs of Alexander the Great. A sweeping political and cultural history, Killing for the Republic closes with a compelling argument in favor of resurrecting the citizen-soldier ideal in modern America.

Download or read book The First Man in Rome written by Colleen McCullough and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 1156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With extraordinary narrative power, New York Times bestselling author Colleen McCullough sweeps the reader into a whirlpool of pageantry and passion, bringing to vivid life the most glorious epoch in human history. When the world cowered before the legions of Rome, two extraordinary men dreamed of personal glory: the military genius and wealthy rural "upstart" Marius, and Sulla, penniless and debauched but of aristocratic birth. Men of exceptional vision, courage, cunning, and ruthless ambition, separately they faced the insurmountable opposition of powerful, vindictive foes. Yet allied they could answer the treachery of rivals, lovers, enemy generals, and senatorial vipers with intricate and merciless machinations of their own—to achieve in the end a bloody and splendid foretold destiny . . . and win the most coveted honor the Republic could bestow.

Download or read book Rome s Greatest Defeat written by Adrian Murdoch and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2008-07-14 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In AD 9 half of Rome's Western army was ambushed in a German forest and annihilated. Three legions, three cavalry units and six auxiliary regiments - some 25,000 men - were wiped out. It dealt a body blow to the empire's imperial pretensions and was Rome's greatest defeat. No other battle stopped the Roman empire dead in its tracks. Although one of the most significant and dramatic battles in European history, this is also one which has been largely overlooked. Drawing on primary sources and a vast wealth of new archaeological evidence, Adrian Murdoch brings to life the battle itself, the historical background and the effects of the Roman defeat as well as exploring the personalities of those who took part.

Download or read book Mortal Republic written by Edward J. Watts and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn why the Roman Republic collapsed -- and how it could have continued to thrive -- with this insightful history from an award-winning author. In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars -- and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus. The death of Rome's Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.

Download or read book Soldier of Rome The Legionary written by James Mace and published by James Mace. This book was released on 2008-12-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rome's Vengeance In the year A.D. 9, three Roman Legions under Quintilius Varus were betrayed by the Germanic war chief, Arminius, and destroyed in the forest known as Teutoburger Wald. Six years later Rome is finally ready to unleash Her vengeance on the barbarians. The Emperor Tiberius has sent his adopted son, Germanicus Caesar, into Germania with an army of forty-thousand legionaries. The come not on a mission of conquest, but one of annihilation. With them is a young legionary named Artorius. For him the war is a personal vendetta; a chance to avenge his brother, who was killed in Teutoburger Wald. In Germania Arminius knows the Romans are coming. He realizes that the only way to fight the legions is through deceit, cunning, and plenty of well-placed brute force. In truth he is leery of Germanicus, knowing that he was trained to be a master of war by the Emperor himself. The entire Roman Empire held its collective breath as Germanicus and Arminius faced each other in what would become the most brutal and savage campaign the world had seen in a generation; a campaign that could only end in a holocaust of fire and blood.

Download or read book Marcus Aurelius written by Anthony R Birley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Assassination of Julius Caesar written by Michael Parenti and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2004-03-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parenti presents a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. As he carefully weighs the evidence in the murder of Caesar, he sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about Roman society.

Download or read book Are We Rome written by Cullen Murphy and published by HMH. This book was released on 2008-05-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What went wrong in imperial Rome, and how we can avoid it: “If you want to understand where America stands in the world today, read this.” —Thomas E. Ricks The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds since the beginning of our republic. Depending on who’s doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action—or a dire warning of imminent collapse. In this “provocative and lively” book, Cullen Murphy points out that today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place, and reveals a wide array of similarities between the two societies (The New York Times). Looking at the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of bribery in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic through various forms of privatization, Murphy persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside—two things that must be changed if we are to avoid Rome’s fate. “Are We Rome? is just about a perfect book. . . . I wish every politician would spend an evening with this book.” —James Fallows

Download or read book Brutus written by Kathryn Tempest and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This award-winning biography delves beyond the myths about Ancient Rome’s most famous assassin: “A beautifully written and thought-provoking book” (Christopher Pelling, author of Plutarch and History). Conspirator and assassin, philosopher and statesman, promoter of peace and commander in war, Marcus Brutus was a controversial and enigmatic man even to those who knew him. His leading role in the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC, immortalized his name, but no final verdict has ever been made about his fateful act. Was Brutus wrong to kill his friend and benefactor or was he right to place his duty to country ahead of personal obligations? In this comprehensive biography, Kathryn Tempest examines historical sources to bring to light the personal and political struggles Brutus faced. As the details are revealed—from his own correspondence with Cicero, the perceptions of his peers, and the Roman aristocratic values and concepts that held sway in his time—Brutus emerges from legend, revealed as the complex man he was. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner

Download or read book The seven kings of Rome written by Livy and published by . This book was released on 1872 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: