Can anyone suggest an authoritative or gripping history of the Roman Empire?

Dan Carlin Hardcore History podcast.

Caesar and Christ, Will Durant. It's a good, comprehensive start that is well-written. He writes with a literary flourish that makes his works worth reading.

Quotes:

quote:

---

Once more, in the great systole and diastole of history, an age of freedom ended and an age of discipline began.

---

quote:

---

Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.

---

quote:

---

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

---

The Rise of Rome by Anthony Everitt is an in-depth but brief overview(comparatively) of a less popular time period in Roman History.

Cullen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is well written and well sourced. It starts immediately after the death of Gaius Gracchus and continues to the ascension of Augustus. She brings all the big characters to life but it's Sulla who really leaps off the page.

quote:

---

Mike Duncan's The History of Rome podcast.

---

For sure

quote:

---

Mary Beard’s SPQR is good

---

quote:

---

Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She opined that many people, once "the shock had faded", thought "the United States had it coming", and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price"

---

frick that bitch

quote:

---

Mike Duncan's The History of Rome podcast. It's several years old, so you can listen beginning to end at your own pace.

---

Mike Duncan also wrote a book on a specific part of the Roman Empire, and it's great. The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Empire is a great read. It covers that era 146-78 BC in which a lot was going on. I'm pretty sure much of the second half of the book has to do with the rule of Sulla.

Eta: sorry, didn't see Tiger's post. Consider this a second rec for Duncan's book.