A01=Richard Alston
Author_Richard Alston
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Category=NL-HB
COP=United States
Discount=15
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
HMM=240
IMPN=Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN13=9780190663469
Language_English
PA=Available
PD=20170413
POP=New York
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
PUB=Oxford University Press Inc
SMM=22
SN=Ancient Warfare and Civilization
Subject=History
WG=596
WMM=172
Product details
- ISBN 9780190663469
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 157 x 234 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jul 2017
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: New York, US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Novelized, televised, and endlessly scrutinized by scholars, the fall of the Roman Republic marks one of history's great turning points. Historians have studied the descent of the Republic into civil war as a great political tragedy, a warning from the past about the unsustainability of empires; political scientists have labeled it a parable about militarism, populism, moral decay, or the inevitable corruption of political systems. Yet the familiar story of the Roman Republic's downfall continues to be the story of its elites. What if we started thinking about Roman politics not from the perspectives of Caesar and Cicero, but from the point of view of the soldier, the peasant, or the pauper? In an original account of what he calls Rome's revolution, Richard Alston reinscribes these humble protagonists into their tumultuous era. They, like the ruthless aristocrats they swore allegiance to, were political agents, negotiating their positions in the context of a "failed state."
Rome's Revolution blends riveting historical narrative with socio-economic analysis, restoring a rich context to the cataclysmic violence of the period. In addition to chronicling the drama of aristocratic rivalries, the book digs beneath the high politics of Cicero, Caesar, Antony and Octavian to examine the problems of making a living in first-century BC Italy. Portraying the revolution as the crisis of a violent society--both among the citizenry and among a ruling class whose legitimacy was dwindling--Rome's Revolution provides new insight into the motivations that drove men to march on their capital city and slaughter their compatriots.
Richard Alston is Professor of Roman History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His previous books include Aspects of Roman History 31 BC-AD 117 and Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt.
