Rome at War
Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic
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Narrated by:
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Rene Ruiz
About this listen
Historians have long asserted that during and after the Hannibalic War, the Roman Republic's need to conscript men for long-term military service helped bring about the demise of Italy's small farms and that the misery of impoverished citizens then became fuel for the social and political conflagrations of the late republic. Nathan Rosenstein challenges this claim, showing how Rome reconciled the needs of war and agriculture throughout the middle republic.
The key, Rosenstein argues, lies in recognizing the critical role of family formation. By analyzing models of families' needs for agricultural labor over their life cycles, he shows that families often had a surplus of manpower to meet the demands of military conscription. Did, then, Roman imperialism play any role in the social crisis of the later second century B.C.?
Rosenstein argues that Roman warfare had critical demographic consequences that have gone unrecognized by previous historians: heavy military mortality paradoxically helped sustain a dramatic increase in the birthrate, ultimately leading to overpopulation and landlessness.
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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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An Edible History of Humanity
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
- By: Walter Rodney, Angela Y. Davis - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
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A Superb must read for everyone
- By Joy on 04-16-19
By: Walter Rodney, and others
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How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying Too)
- By: David Goldman
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Past and present civilizations failed and fail for many reasons, but the number-one predictor of a civilization’s survival is its sense of religion—or lack thereof. So argues David Goldman in How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying Too). The strength of a civilization’s religion affects its purpose, its fertility rate, and ultimately, its fate, says Goldman—who then argues that, contrary to popular belief, Islamic countries are in the last throes of death while Christian America is in a position to flourish.
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Pseudointellectual Clickbait
- By Sam on 12-22-20
By: David Goldman
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The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 22 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.
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Few forests, but lots of trees
- By Steve Pagano on 10-05-15
By: Francis Fukuyama
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Scottish History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Scotland
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: David Patton
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This captivating history audiobook takes you on a remarkable journey from the earliest extensive historical record of Scotland through the long struggle toward nationhood, all the way to postwar Scotland.
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Written for a male audience
- By Anonymous User on 12-11-19
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Praetorian
- The Rise and Fall of Rome's Imperial Bodyguard
- By: Guy de la Bédoyère
- Narrated by: Malk Williams
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Founded by Augustus around 27 BC, the elite Praetorian Guard was tasked with the protection of the emperor and his family. As the centuries unfolded, however, Praetorian soldiers served not only as protectors and enforcers but also as powerful political players. Fiercely loyal to some emperors, they vied with others and ruthlessly toppled those who displeased them, including Caligula, Nero, Pertinax, and many more. Guy de la Bédoyère provides a compelling first full narrative history of the Praetorians.
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Buy it
- By Charles on 08-07-17
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Spartans: A Captivating Guide to the Fierce Warriors of Ancient Greece, Including Spartan Military Tactics, the Battle of Thermopylae, How Sparta Was Ruled, and More
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Richard L Walton
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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If you want to discover the captivating history of Sparta, then pay attention...Sparta is one of the first names that comes to mind when we think about the ancient world. And this is for good reason. After its founding sometime in the 10th century BCE, Sparta soon rose to be one of the most powerful city-states in not only the Greek but the entire ancient world.
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This is Sparta!!!!!!!! and everything else too.
- By Brian VonFeldt on 05-28-21
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Millennium
- From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed over a Thousand Years
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict.
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Bad ending - literally
- By John Gordon on 12-14-16
By: Ian Mortimer
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The Third Horseman
- Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century
- By: William Rosen
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In May 1315 it started to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe's livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives - one eighth of Europe's total population.
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Not About Famine or Climate
- By George on 05-24-14
By: William Rosen
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The Restoration of Rome
- Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
- By: Peter Heather
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In AD 476, the last of Rome's emperors, known as "Augustulus", was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun's henchmen. With the imperial vestments dispatched to Constantinople, the curtain fell on the Roman empire in Western Europe, its territories divided among successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But, if the Roman Empire was dead, Romans across much of the old empire still lived, holding on to their lands, their values, and their institutions.
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Byzantine Empire Stands Tall!
- By Placeholder on 05-22-14
By: Peter Heather
What listeners say about Rome at War
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Nelson Alexander
- 01-13-10
Rome Under the Reign of the Quants
To begin with, this is a peculiar choice for an audiobook, and while I rather enjoyed it, caveat emptor. It is a highly technical demographic study of farming and conscriptions in the period leading up to the tribunal of Tiberius Grachus, filled with lusty, uninhibited data crunching. Good for students, specialists, born nerds, or anyone interested in methodology, but a far cry from the drama of Gibbon or HBO. The reader has a good, youthful, even voice that helps, and he keeps at it manfully. But he tends to mispronounce a few of the ten-dollar words (I did say "youthful") and for a few quantitative stretches he might as well be reading a credit card bill. I know nothing about Roman history and am not qualified to judge the research. The demographics of the Gracchan reforms are highly charged ideological material. Leftists see Tiberius Gracchus as a hero of class struggle, while conservatives see him as the Hugo Chavez of the ancient world, an unscrupulous populist who set Rome on the path to tyranny. (There is no fouler insult than "You Gracchi!" at the Cato Institute, no doubt.) As a leftist, I was and remain a bit suspicious of new histories of the period, given today's orchestrated right-wing efforts in America to rewrite the history of the depression and New Deal. This work seems good, interesting, and not overtly ideological, but it will undoubtedly provide conservatives with "hard facts" for retrospective culture wars. I am not sure what I think about such quantitative approaches. No matter how carefully the author qualifies his material and points to deficiencies, "data" has psychological impact and a long afterlife. My own purely amateur sense is that the many contingencies, unknowns, and variables involved in such models do not warrant the sense of certainty we tend to ascribe to the numerical output.
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Overall
- Adam
- 10-27-10
Really interesting book, but the narrator....
This is not an easy listen because it is a highly analytical history book. The book itself is quite interesting and an accomplished narrator could handle it well, but Rene Ruiz is a bore. Better to just read the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- guido
- 12-17-10
Even for an ancient history buff, this is boring
This book is extremely quantitative -- imagine someone reciting to you the reams of data they collected for their PhD thesis. Furthermore, the author relies heavily on long-shot estimates and attempted modelling of behavior that took place over 2000 years ago. Even for someone like me who loves ancient Roman history and likes academic history books, this is extremely difficult to listen to. I found myself wondering when it would be over so I could listen to something else.
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1 person found this helpful