The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume One
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Narrated by:
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Charlton Griffin
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By:
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Edward Gibbon
About this listen
Gibbon's masterpiece on Rome is a monument of literature and a model of modern historical research. There has never been anything quite like it since its publication between 1776 and 1788. Although some of Gibbon's views are considered controversial today, there is no doubt that his research and patient devotion to scholarship produced one of the most valuable and renowned histories of all time.
Gibbon begins his story during the height of the Roman Empire under the Antonines. From there we are shown how the Roman civilization began a long, agonizing slide into chaos and debauchery. Although it is a story familiar to many, never has it been told with such panache and vigor. Volume one comes to an end with the accession of the Emperors Gratian and Valentinian II in the year A.D. 375.The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire will continue in Volumes two and three.
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This pamphlet, first published in 1776, set in print the word every American was thinking about, but none dared say: independence! It was published anonymously in New York, selling 120,000 copies in the first 3 months and half a million in that same year. Its author, Thomas Paine, wrote in a language that could be understood by any reasonably literate colonist. But more important than it being so well received, is that it captured the American colonists' imaginations and was a primary catalyst to the independence movement in the United States. Noted American historian Bernard Bailyn called it "the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant ever written in the English language."
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revolutionary ideas for sure
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Constantine and the Conversion of Europe
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- Unabridged
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By the end of Diocletian's reign in the opening years of the fourth century, the pagan world had collapsed into the arms of a multicultural religious movement which had spread from the eastern Mediterranean. These were the "mystery religions" which had been in competition with one another for a century. By the time of Constantine, they had spread everywhere within the empire. But one of these religions, Christianity, was chosen by the young emperor.
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A Lot of Potentially Boring Detail
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Details beyond imagination
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The Prince
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The Prince is a 16th-century political treatise by the Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513, after he was forced to leave Florence as a political exile. Dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the work is Machiavelli’s advice to the ruler of Florence on how to stay in power.
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Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.
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For the Very Dedicated
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Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility - the one percent of the population who controlled 99 percent of the empire's wealth. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti recounts this period, spanning the years 100 to 33 BC, from the perspective of the Roman people. In doing so, he presents a provocative, trenchantly researched narrative of popular resistance against a powerful elite.
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another side to Roman history
- By Darksnovia on 04-16-22
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Democracy in America (Excerpts)
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Alexis de Tocqueville's renowned analysis of American democracy still has relevance today. In 1831 de Tocqueville was sent to America by the French government to study the U.S. penal system, but his real aim was to observe a democratic republic firsthand to see if such an entity could function with dignity and humanity. His travels, which took him to the cities of the Northeast, to the frontier and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi and through the South, showed him a great deal about the United States. In 1834, he wrote Democracy in America, in which he examines the advantages and pitfalls of democracy, the conditions and conflicts among the races, and the movements that grip the country.
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Democracy in America
- By Michael on 02-18-10
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Democracy in America
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In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America.
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Most Listenable, if not the Best Translation
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The Age of Caesar
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Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names resonate across thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended the Roman republic, their lives still haunt us as examples of how the hunger for personal power can overwhelm collective politics, how the exaltation of the military can corrode civilian authority, and how the best intentions can lead to disastrous consequences. Plutarch renders these history-making lives as flesh-and-blood characters.
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Terrific
- By Michael on 06-13-23
By: Plutarch, and others
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What listeners say about The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume One
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mark
- 11-22-13
the standard
If you enjoy Roman History then you will love this book. Gibbon goes into excruciating detail to describe slow decline of the empire and the monumental steps toward the eventual fall.
There is a span of time before Diocletian that almost no Emperor was able to remain in power, or alive for that matter, for more than a year or two after assuming the purple.
It was very interesting to see the slow loss of impact that the city of Rome itself had on the empire. Several of the Emperors rarely if ever, even visited Rome. And I was amazed at how many non Italian born Roman Emperors that there were. With the emergence of Constantinople, Rome continued to slide somewhat into irrelevance.
The impact of Religion, particularly of the role of Christianity is discussed in great detail.
Even with the eventual fall of the empire, Europe, both Western and Eastern, to this day retains some striking resemblances to the Roman Empire.
Charlton Griffon is one of the premier narrators of audio books and he performs magnificently in this lengthy and detailed book.
Well worth the credit
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Overall
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- Gary
- 08-03-14
Comprehensive to the point of tedium
A linear detailed presentation of a bunch of Roman Emperors and wannabe emperors after the reign of Marcus Aurelius for which you most likely have never heard of. There's no doubt Gibbon writes better than almost anyone ("all the German men were brave, and their women were chaste, and notwithstanding the latter of these virtues is acquired and preserved with much more difficulty than the former"), but there is a reason why the emperors after 150 AD to 300 AD are so little known today and are best just a footnote instead of the main story of a history.
Read at your own risk. Beautifully written, but comprehensive to the point of tedium. Beautifully read by narrator, but doesn't change the fact that the story leaves little impression with the listener.
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4 people found this helpful