On one hand, you have elections, a functioning balance of powers, and a messy, often unsatisfactory Republic; on the other hand, you have an Empire. How do you rise or fall from one to the other?
British novelist Tom Holland helps answer this question, and with the sure hand of, well, a novelist. He takes you from Rome’s Tarquin-vanquishing foundation to the Battle of Actium and the triumph of Octavian. Holland definitely keeps the narrative churning. And I finished the history with a tremendous respect for the way that he selected and arranged a vast body of material.
If you are in the mood for a tale of incest, oysters, panthers, conquest, political intrigue, high rhetoric, backstabbing (often literal), debt, gang warfare, pirates, sex, gladiators, senators, graffiti, morality, immorality, eels, and luxury coastal property, this is your book.
