Ancient Italy

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.

Prizewinning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues that these centuries were critical in the formulation of European identity. Far from being a middle period between more significant epochs, this age has much to tell us in its own right about the progress of culture and the development of political thought.

Adrian Goldsworthy has received wide acclaim for his exceptional writing on the Roman Empire - including high praise from the acclaimed military historian and author John Keegan - and here he offers a new perspective on the empire by focusing on its greatest generals, including Scipio Africanus, Marius, Pompey, Caesar, and Titus.

Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, and the Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture. In this fascinating account of the island from the earliest times to the present day, author and journalist Jamie Mackay leads us through this most elusive of places.

At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. For three centuries, the city attracted scholars, lawyers, craftsmen, and religious luminaries, becoming a true cultural and political capital.

If you want to discover the captivating history of Italy and Rome, then this audiobook is for you. It includes two books: History of Italy and History of Rome. It covers topics ranging from the founding and early settlements to the modern history.

Byron and Hitler were equally entranced by Rome's most famous monument, the Colosseum. Mid-Victorians admired the hundreds of varieties of flowers in its crannies and occasionally shuddered at its reputation for contagion, danger, and sexual temptation. Today it is the highlight of a tour of Italy for more than three million visitors a year, a concert arena for the likes of Paul McCartney, and a national symbol of opposition to the death penalty. Its ancient history is chock full of romantic but erroneous myths.

In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable, its vast territory accounting for most of the known world. By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in Western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained. This was a period of remarkable personalities, from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius to emperors like Diocletian, who portrayed themselves as tough, even brutal, soldiers.

Rome is a city of myth and legend. The Eternal City, the city of the seven hills, the sacred city, the caput mundi, the center of the world, Roma, Rome, by any of her many names is a city built of history and blood, marble and water, war and conquest. From legendary beginnings, a city rose from the swamp surrounded by the seven hills and split by the Tiber River. Built and rebuilt, a sacred republic and a divine empire, blessed by a thousand gods and by One, the story of her rise and fall has been told and retold for a thousand years and is still relevant in today's world, as echoes of her ancient glory have shaped our culture, laws, lifestyle, and beliefs in subtle and pervasive ways.

When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 37-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks - filled with pearls of wisdom - and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire.

In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors, their wives, and children personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman emperor in 476. That leader became Theoderic the Great (454-526). This engaging history of his life and reign immerses listeners in the world of the warrior-king who ushered in decades of peace and stability in Italy as king of Goths and Romans.

The Tragedy of Empire begins in the late fourth century with the reign of Julian, the last non-Christian Roman emperor, and takes listeners to the final years of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the sixth century. Kulikowski traces 200 years of Roman history during which the Western Empire ceased to exist while the Eastern Empire remained politically strong and culturally vibrant.

A concise, star-studded retelling of Italy's past, from Caesar and Augustus to da Vinci and Michelangelo, tracing the story of a country with prodigious global influence—from a foremost author of historic Italy.

Get Ready for Action and Adventure With Nicholas Foxe and His Team of Code Hunters An Army Ranger makes a snap decision in the heat of battle. Cave explorers discover a 10,000-year-old tablet with a mysterious code too complex for ancient people. An elderly violin maker and his autistic daughter guard manuscripts telling of an advanced civilization. Fate brings these people together in a mystery, when solved, will change the future of mankind. Nicholas Foxe assembles an unlikely team tasked to unlock the secrets of the tablet. They travel from western caves to the old world searching for ...

A mysterious forger. A plot to empty the world’s museums. Can this champion of culture stop it before all our history is fake? A forensic audit at the Vatican Museum reveals looting on a grand scale. A corrupt antiquities dealer has been plundering Europe's institutions—replacing priceless originals with copies. Darwin Lacroix, the Pope’s new Director of Special Archaeological Investigations, is repulsed by self-serving curators, profit-hungry auction houses, and secretive government Freeports. But he cannot stem the loss of artistic heritage. Until a sale goes wrong. When a ...

When Livy began his epic The History of Rome, he had no idea of the fame and fortune he would eventually attain. He would go on to become the most widely read writer in the Roman Empire and was eagerly sought out and feted like a modern celebrity. And his fame continued to grow after his death. His bombastic style, his intricate and complex sentence structure, and his flair for powerfully recreating the searing drama of historical incidents made him a favorite of teachers and pupils alike.

Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.

Why does Rome continue to exert a hold on our imagination? City of the Seven Hills, spiritual home of Catholic Christianity, city of the artistic imagination, enduring symbol of our common European heritage - Rome has inspired, charmed, and tempted empire-builders, dreamers, writers, and travelers across the 27 centuries of its existence. Ferdinand Addis tells its rich story in a grand narrative style for a new generation of listeners.

Tacitus, who condemns the depravity of these rulers, which he saw as proof of the corrupting force of absolute power, writes caustically of the brutal and lecherous Tiberius, the weak and cuckolded Claudius, and "the artist" Nero. In particular, his account of the bloody reigns of Tiberius and Nero brims with plots, murder, poisoning, suicide, uprisings, death, and destruction. The Annals also provides a vivid account of the violent suppression of the revolt led by Boudicca in Britain, the great fire of Rome under Nero, and the subsequent bloody persecution of the Christians.

The Roman Republic, and later the Roman Empire, was an unusual conqueror because it would absorb and assimilate elements of the cultures it dominated. A standing practice was to allow the defeated to continue practicing their culture and religion so long as they paid their taxes on time. Such a procedure was part of why Christianity would seep into the Roman Empire around the 1st century CE, for example. For the Etruscans, this meant they influenced aspects of Roman civilization, one of the most powerful cultures in the history of the Western world.