Goldsworthy relates the history as lucidly as anyone could. It perhaps tells us all we need to know that it becomes impossible to keep track of all the emperors of this period and of the enemies they faced. The Eastern Empire, Byzantium, would linger on for centuries longer and always identify itself as Roman, but for purposes of analysis, the Roman Empire as a recognizable entity had passed He then marches us through centuries fraught with assassinations, civil war, "barbarian" invasions, wars with Persia, the rise of Islam, a splitting of the Empire into East and West, and so on, until there's a brief period of productive stability under Justinian and then the Western Empire is unofficially declared dead when a German warlord, Odoacer, is crowned King of Italy by his troops (476 A.D.). Goldsworthy begins with the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD), when the Empire is considered to have reached its high tide. So if Edward Gibbon's was once the authoritative account of the "Decline and Fall", this new book will likely serve as a new standard.Īs Gibbon, Mr. His narrative histories of ancient Rome are immensely readable for the layman, but detailed enough and sufficiently referenced for even professionals to have to reckon with. Adrian Goldworthy is one of our great popular historians.
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