Historians of Ancient Rome

The Historians of Ancient Rome is the most comprehensive collection of ancient sources for Roman history available in a single English volume, tracing the history of Rome from the city’s foundation by Romulus in 753 BCE to the rise of Christianity as the religion of the Roman emperors in the fourth century CE.

After a general introduction on Roman historical writing, extensive passages from more than a dozen Greek and Roman historians and biographers as well as coins, images, and inscriptions explore over 1000 years of Rome’s history. Readers will engage with how the Romans wrote about Rome’s climb to world domination and the challenges it faced in the late empire: the defeat of Hannibal; the conquest of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean; the defeat of the Catilinarian conspiracy; Caesar’s conquest of Gaul; Antony and Cleopatra; the establishment of the Empire by Caesar Augustus; the horrors of the reigns of Tiberius and Nero; the “Roman Peace” under Hadrian; and the political turmoil, disintegration, and consolidation in the third and fourth centuries CE. The fourth edition has been revised to include maps, coins, new inscriptions, images, and additional readings, providing a rich anthology that makes visible both the textual and material worlds by which Roman society represented, controlled, and experienced the past.

The Historians of Ancient Rome is intended both for undergraduate courses in Roman history and for the general reader interested in approaching the Romans through the original historical sources. This is a book that no student of Roman history should be without.

Ronald Mellor is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has been teaching Greek and Roman history, western civilization, and ancient world history since 1976. He was for five years Chair of the UCLA History department. His most recent book was Tacitus’ Annals published in 2011 by the Oxford University Press. His research focuses on ancient religion and Roman historiography. Other books include Thea Rome (1977), From Augustus to Nero: The First Dynasty of Imperial Rome (1990), Tacitus (1993), Tacitus: The Classical Heritage (1995), The Roman Historians (1999), and Caesar Augustus and the Creation of the Roman Empire (2005).

Jason Moralee is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He teaches Greek and Roman history and world religions. His most recent book is Rome’s Holy Mountain: The Capitoline Hill in Late Antiquity.