Killing for the Republic Audiobook By Steele Brand cover art

Killing for the Republic

Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman Way of War

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Killing for the Republic

By: Steele Brand
Narrated by: Tom Parks
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The year 146 BC marked the brutal end to the Roman Republic's 118-year struggle for the western Mediterranean. Breaching the walls of their great enemy, Carthage, Roman troops slaughtered countless citizens, enslaved those who survived, and leveled the 700-year-old city. That same year in the east, Rome destroyed Corinth and subdued Greece. Over little more than a century, Rome's triumphant armies of citizen-soldiers had shocked the world by conquering all of its neighbors.

How did armies made up of citizen-soldiers manage to pull off such a major triumph? And what made the republic so powerful? In Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand explains how Rome transformed average farmers into ambitious killers capable of conquering the entire Mediterranean. Rome instilled something violent and vicious in its soldiers, making them more effective than other empire builders. Unlike the Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians, it fought with part-timers. Examining the relationship between the republican spirit and the citizen-soldier, Brand argues that Roman republican values and institutions prepared common men for the rigors and horrors of war.

©2019 Johns Hopkins University Press (P)2019 Tantor Ancient Military Rome Ancient Greece Middle Ages Ancient History Italy War Mythology
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Excellent book, great content the reader was great. The book gives an excellent account of The Roman Republic and what led to its downfall. Wonderful book.

Excellent content and reader

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This is a very interesting historical analysis of the military of the Roman Republic. This is an excellent supplement to any broader works on the Republic that is easy to listen to and understand.

Great, Unique History

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I teach Latin so know a good bit about Roman culture and this found the story interesting. However, I found the style of narration vexing as it was often hard to tell when he was quoting a source and when the author’s words resumed. I also didn’t care for how he pronounced many of the names; some were quite jarringly different from their usual pronunciations.

All in all, a good book, but one I wish I’d read rather than listened to.

Interesting story, vexing format

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I love history and haven't found to many history books or subject uninteresting but this book bored me to death.

boring

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I don't mind someone pronouncing "Julius Caesar" the way it is almost always said in English, even though in his day it would have sounded more like "YOU-lee-us KYE-ser." He sticks with the conventional pronunciations with names like Cicero and Cato., and that's to be expected, It's harder to ignore though with names like Gaius, which Tom Parks pronounces "GEY-oose." In fact, with some names I have to wonder what he thinks he's doing. Did he scroll through a guide on Latin name pronunciation five minutes before he started reading? He takes this to extremes with any names ending in "-us", which ending he turn into "-oose". In his reading voice, Marcus Brutus becomes "Mar-KOOSE Broo-toose" and Lepidus is given this bizarre rendering of "Luh-PEE-doose". It's really jarring and several times I just wanted to turn it off.

Narrator Really Detracts

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