Killing for the Republic
Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman Way of War
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Narrated by:
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Tom Parks
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By:
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Steele Brand
About this listen
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.
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George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: Former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radical change without their colonists’ consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783.
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Modest history primer, wished for more substance
- By Buretto on 10-21-21
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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The Mongol Invasions
- A Captivating Guide to the Mongol Invasions and Conquests along with the Life of Genghis Khan
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mongols were known to be both merciful as well as tolerant. Moreover, their conquests weren’t aimed against civilized life; in fact, they helped connect numerous cultures and facilitated the spread of ideas and knowledge across the continent. Diving deep inside their culture and society, we’ll cast off their barbaric image. By the end of this guide of the Mongol conquests, you will get a better understanding of not only the history of the Mongols but of all of humankind as well.
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Great Overview of Mongol History
- By D. Buxman on 07-06-20
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A History of the Roman Republic
- By: Cyril Edward Robinson
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The story of the Roman Republic is the greatest epic in human history. Seen in the long perspective of time, it seems too fantastic to be real. From her modest beginnings as a convenient fording place on the Tiber to her eventual destiny as the mistress of the Mediterranean, Rome offers a strange tale of fate, sacrifice, and indomitable willpower. The stern realities of war shaped Rome's policies from the very beginning.
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Excellent overview
- By jaime on 05-14-15
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Black Spartacus
- The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
- By: Sudhir Hazareesingh
- Narrated by: Ben Arogundade
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe—appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film—the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal.” A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule.
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Liberator of Haiti and a lamp to the world
- By Mike on 11-08-20
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The Sacred Band
- Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom
- By: James Romm
- Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From classicist James Romm comes a thrilling deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes - and the saga of the greatest military corps of the age, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.
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Stop now and don’t buy this book.
- By Robert Pitman on 06-08-21
By: James Romm
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A Short History of Russia
- How the World's Largest Country Invented Itself, from the Pagans to Putin
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Mark Galeotti
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnic group, no true central identity. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it has been subject to invasion by outsiders, from Vikings to Mongols, from Napoleon’s French to Hitler’s Germans. In order to forge an identity, it has mythologized its past to unite its people and to signal strength to outsiders. In A Short History of Russia, Mark Galeotti explores the history of this fascinating, glorious, desperate, and exasperating country.
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Wonderful short history
- By Tad Davis on 01-19-21
By: Mark Galeotti
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War: How Conflict Shaped Us
- By: Margaret MacMillan
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control?
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Horrible choice of narrator derails this book
- By Steve Winnett on 02-25-21
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The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta
- The Persian Challenge
- By: Paul A. Rahe
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 2,500 years ago, a confederation of small Greek city-states defeated the invading armies of Persia, the most powerful empire in the world. In this meticulously researched study, historian Paul Rahe argues that Sparta was responsible for the initial establishment of the Hellenic defensive coalition and was, in fact, the most essential player in its ultimate victory.
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Excellent Investigation Undermined by Bad Editing
- By Richard on 02-12-16
By: Paul A. Rahe
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History's Greatest Generals
- 10 Commanders Who Conquered Empires, Revolutionized Warfare, and Changed History Forever
- By: Michael Rank
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether it is Hannibal of Carthage marching elephants across the Alps and attacking the heart of Rome, Khalid ibn al-Walid boasting an undefeated military career and destroying the Persian Empire while subduing the Byzantines, or Russian General Alexander Suvurov and his elevation of the bayonet to a work of art that could cut down any European army, great military leaders have exerted tremendous influence on society. This book will look at the lives of the 10 greatest military commanders in history.
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Great Book
- By MICHAEL H on 01-27-14
By: Michael Rank
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Gladius: The World of the Roman Soldier
- By: Guy de la Bédoyère
- Narrated by: Piers Hampton
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Gladius, Guy de la Bedoyere takes us straight to the heart of what it meant to be a part of the Roman army. Rather than a history of the army itself, or a guide to military organization and fighting methods, this book is a ground-level recreation of what it was like to be a soldier in the army that made the empire. Surveying numerous aspects of life in the Roman army between 264 BCE and 337 CE, Gladius draws not only on the words of famed Roman historians, but also those of the soldiers themselves.
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Nothing new here
- By Charles on 08-06-22
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Ancient Rome
- The Rise and Fall of An Empire
- By: Simon Baker
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid. From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history.
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Clear and dramatic
- By Tad Davis on 08-01-17
By: Simon Baker
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What listeners say about Killing for the Republic
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Elizabeth
- 12-30-20
Interesting story, vexing format
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- B. Weaver
- 07-19-24
Narrator Really Detracts
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.
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- sh8101
- 07-16-20
boring
I love history and haven't found to many history books or subject uninteresting but this book bored me to death.
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