When Antony fell in love with the most powerful woman in the world, Egypt’s ruler Cleopatra, and thwarted Octavian’s ambition to rule the empire, another civil war broke out. In 31 BC one of the largest naval battles in the ancient world took place—more than 600 ships, almost 200,000 men, and one woman—the Battle of Actium. Octavian prevailed and subsequently defeated Antony and Cleopatra, who eventually committed suicide. The Battle of Actium had great consequences for the empire. Had Antony and Cleopatra won, the empire’s capital might have moved from Rome to Alexandria, Cleopatra’s capital, and Latin might have become the empire’s second language after Greek, which was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt. In this riveting and exciting history, Barry Strauss, ancient history authority, describes this consequential battle with the drama and expertise that it deserves. The War That Made the Roman Empire is essential history that features three of the greatest figures of the ancient world.

    . . essential for all future discussions of the subject.”—Barry Strauss, New Criterion  “A lucid yet terrifying account of the 'Jewish War'—the uprising of the Jews in 66 CE, and the Roman empire’s savage response, in a story that stretches from Rome to Jerusalem.”—John Ma, Columbia University   This deeply researched and insightful book examines the causes, course, and historical significance of the Jews’ failed revolt against Rome from 66 to 74 CE, including the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Based on a comprehensive study of all the evidence and new statistical data, Guy Rogers argues that the Jewish rebels fought for their religious and political freedom and lost due to military mistakes.   Rogers contends that while the Romans won the war, they lost the peace. When the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, they thought that they had defeated the God of Israel and eliminated Jews as a strategic threat to their rule. Instead, they ensured the Jews’ ultimate victory. After their defeat Jews turned to the written words of their God, and following those words led the Jews to recover their freedom in the promised land. The war's tragic outcome still shapes the worldview of billions of people today.

    Hannibal, a daring African general from the city of Carthage, led an army of warriors and battle elephants over the snowy Alps to invade the very heart of Rome's growing empire. But what kind of person would dare to face the most relentless imperial power of the ancient world? How could Hannibal, consistently outnumbered and always deep in enemy territory, win battle after battle until he held the very fate of Rome within his grasp? Hannibal appeals to many as the ultimate underdog—a Carthaginian David against the Goliath of Rome—but it wasn't just his genius on the battlefield that set him apart. As a boy and then a man, his self-discipline and determination were legendary. As a military leader, like Alexander the Great before him and Julius Caesar after, he understood the hearts of men and had an uncanny ability to read the unseen weaknesses of his enemy. As a commander in war, Hannibal has few equals in history and has long been held as a model of strategic and tactical genius. But Hannibal was much more than just a great general. He was a practiced statesman, a skilled diplomat, and a man deeply devoted to his family and country.  Roman historians—on whom we rely for almost all our information on Hannibal—portray him as a cruel barbarian, but how does the story change if we look at Hannibal from the Carthaginian point of view? Can we search beneath the accounts of Roman writers who were eager to portray Hannibal as a monster and find a more human figure? Can we use the life of Hannibal to look at the Romans themselves in an unfamiliar way— not as the noble and benign defenders of civilization but as ruthless conquerors motivated by greed and conquest?

    It made theologians of the newly Christianized empire question God’s plan on Earth, and it encouraged many leading Romans to look east to Constantinople for their future. Indeed, the Western Roman Empire would completely collapse in the late 5th century, less than 70 years after the Visigoths sacked Rome, and just how it went from being a superpower to a poorly led, weak, and vulnerable shadow of its former self has preoccupied historians for centuries.To this day, it remains difficult to trace just when the decline began, but it’s fair to say that the sack of Rome was the result of a number of factors that had been coalescing for many years. Only Roman arrogance kept the empire from seeing the grave peril its capital was in, which helped bring about the events leading up to the fall of Rome itself. The Latin phrase imperium sine fine (“empire without end”) neatly summed up not just the geographic reach of the mighty empire, but the feeling that it would never end. Nonetheless, little more than 300 years after the end of the Pax Romana, the Western Roman Empire had all but ceased to exist. During the same period, the population of the city of Rome itself declined from over a million people to less than 30,000. Within the walls of Rome, vast areas returned to pastureland and shepherds grazed their flocks in a surreal landscape where the ruins of structures representing the might of the empire, such as the Patheon, Colosseum and Theatre of Marcellus, rose above a barren vista of scrub and forest.In the end, the fall of the Roman Empire was not a tale of cataclysmic events that shattered the sprawling power, but the culmination of centuries of internal dissent and decay, combined with growing external threats that led to gradual decline and eventually to the empire’s final destruction.(source: Amazon)