Books

The eight volumes

The narrative of Rome at war, from the Gallic sack of 390 BC to the last emperor in the West, AD 476. Read them in order, or open any volume where its years fall on the line.

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

300 BC200 BC100 BCAD 1AD 100AD 200AD 300AD 400

Book I
The Republic in Italy
390–264 BC · 6 chapters · about 2 hours of reading
There is a date which the Romans of the late Republic could neither remember without shuddering nor pronounce without superstition.
The chapters
Book II
The Mediterranean Wars
264–216 BC · 6 chapters · about 2 hours of reading
Of all the transformations a state may undergo in the course of its history, none is more decisive than that by which a regional power becomes a contender for the wider world.
The chapters
Book III
The Long War
216–202 BC · 7 chapters · about 2 hours of reading
The volume now in the reader's hand treats the fourteen years between the catastrophe at Cannae and the engagement at Zama — the period across which the Roman state, having been brought to within a single battle of strategic dissolution, recovered, took the …
The chapters
Book IV
The Wars of Mediterranean Hegemony
200–146 BC · 6 chapters · about 2 hours of reading
The volume now in the reader's hand treats the half-century across which Rome, having survived the Hannibalic War and emerged as the dominant power of the western Mediterranean, extended her strategic supremacy eastward across the Greek and Hellenistic world …
The chapters
Book V
The Crisis of the Republic
133–31 BC · 8 chapters · about 2 hours of reading
The volume now in the reader's hand treats the century across which the Roman Republic , having completed the construction of Mediterranean hegemony described in the previous volume, turned the military instrument of that construction against itself.
The chapters
Book VI
The Wars of the Early Principate
30 BC–AD 96 · 8 chapters · about 2 hours of reading
The volume now opened treats the first century of a new kind of Roman war.
The chapters
Book VII
The High Empire and the Long Crisis
96–284 · 8 chapters · about 1 hour of reading
This volume carries the compendium across its widest arc and its strangest inversion.
The chapters
Book VIII
The Last Age of the West
284–476 · 6 chapters · about 1 hour of reading
The final volume of this compendium narrates an ending, and the Editor's first duty is to say precisely what kind. The Roman West did not fall as Carthage fell, or Jerusalem , or Sarmizegetusa — no siege, no sack-and-interdiction, no final field.
The chapters

The Capstone: the army across eight centuries, how we know, and the argument of the whole series.