Ancient Rome casts a long shadow over the world. It is the empire against which other powers are compared, its story one of vast expansion and ultimate decline and fall, and a mix of apparently “modern” sophistication and utterly alien cruelty. These days only a minority of people have ever studied classics or ancient history, so the Roman Republic is today largely forgotten. For most, Rome means emperors—men draped in sheets and wearing laurel wreaths. A cartoonist can draw a modern politician—albeit probably only a male one—like this, and invoke decadence in general: Nero playing the fiddle or lyre while Rome burns.
In truth, Rome carved out an empire while it was still a republic, destroying Carthage in the process. Yet that is barely remembered. Jesus was born during the reign of Augustus, the future emperor Titus and his legions destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was Constantine who converted to Christianity, giving us in due course a pope in Rome. These events have a wide resonance today even among those with little interest in history itself. There is some justice in all this, for though Rome’s story is not just one of emperors, the monarchy was around for a long time. The Republic lasted for four and a half centuries, but there were emperors based in Italy for five hundred years and after that for almost another thousand years in Constantinople.
In his new book, Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine,
