5 Excellent Roman Empire Books for You Now
Book ListsThe Roman Empire is the term given typically to the period of Roman civilization from the rise of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, until the collapse of the western portion of the empire in the 5th century.
Check out our curation of five of the best books on the Roman Empire. Links to purchase or find a copy in your library are available for each book listing. (Note: books are listed in reverse-chronological order).
For books on Roman civilization more generally, check out our Ancient Rome booklist or our other other Roman book lists. Also, check out our book list on the period preceding the Empire, known as the Roman Republic, or see our other book lists.
1. Garnsey, Peter, Richard Saller, Jas Elsner, Martin Goodman, Richard Gordon, and Greg Woolf. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture. 2nd edition. University of California Press, 2014.
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During the Principate (roughly 27 BCE to 235 CE), when the empire reached its maximum extent, Roman society and culture were radically transformed. But how was the vast territory of the empire controlled? Did the demands of central government stimulate economic growth or endanger survival? What forces of cohesion operated to balance the social and economic inequalities and high mortality rates? How did the official religion react in the face of the diffusion of alien cults and the emergence of Christianity?
These are some of the many questions posed here, in the new, expanded edition of Garnsey and Saller’s pathbreaking account of the economy, society, and culture of the Roman Empire. This second edition includes a new introduction that explores the consequences for government and the governing classes of the replacement of the Republic by the rule of emperors. Addenda to the original chapters offer up-to-date discussions of issues and point to new evidence and approaches that have enlivened the study of Roman history in recent decades. A completely new chapter assesses how far Rome’s subjects resisted her hegemony. The bibliography has also been thoroughly updated, and a new color plate section has been added.
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Peter Garnsey is Emeritus Professor of the History of Classical Antiquity and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. His publications include Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire; Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World; Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine; Cities, Peasants and Food; Food and Society in Classical Antiquity; and Thinking about Property: From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution.*
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Richard Saller is Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He is the author of Personal Patronage under the Early Empire and Patriarchy, Property, and Death in the Roman Family, and he is coeditor of The Cambridge Economic History of Greco-Roman Antiquity.
Contributing authors include Jas Elsner, Martin Goodman, Richard Gordon, and Greg Woolf.
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2. Potter, David. The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395. 2nd edition. Routledge, 2013.
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The Roman Empire at Bay is the only one volume history of the critical years 180-395 AD, which saw the transformation of the Roman Empire from a unitary state centred on Rome, into a new polity with two capitals and a new religion―Christianity. The book integrates social and intellectual history into the narrative, looking to explore the relationship between contingent events and deeper structure. It also covers an amazingly dramatic narrative from the civil wars after the death of Commodus through the conversion of Constantine to the arrival of the Goths in the Roman Empire, setting in motion the final collapse of the western empire.
The new edition takes account of important new scholarship in questions of Roman identity, on economy and society as well as work on the age of Constantine, which has advanced significantly in the last decade, while recent archaeological and art historical work is more fully drawn into the narrative. At its core, the central question that drives The Roman Empire at Bay remains, what did it mean to be a Roman and how did that meaning change as the empire changed? Updated for a new generation of students, this book remains a crucial tool in the study of this period.
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David Potter is Francis W Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan.
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3. Goodman, Martin. The Roman World 44 BC-AD 180. 2nd edition. Routledge, 2011.
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The Roman World 44 BC – AD 180 deals with the transformation of the Mediterranean regions, northern Europe and the Near East by the military autocrats who ruled Rome during this period. The book traces the impact of imperial politics on life in the city of Rome itself and in the rest of the empire, arguing that, despite long periods of apparent peace, this was a society controlled as much by fear of state violence as by consent.
Martin Goodman examines the reliance of Roman emperors on a huge military establishment and the threat of force. He analyses the extent to which the empire functioned as a single political, economic and cultural unit and discusses, region by region, how much the various indigenous cultures and societies were affected by Roman rule. The book has a long section devoted to the momentous religious changes in this period, which witnessed the popularity and spread of a series of elective cults and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity from the complex world of first-century Judaea. This book provides a critical assessment of the significance of Roman rule for inhabitants of the empire, and introduces readers to many of the main issues currently faced by historians of the early empire.
This new edition, incorporating the finds of recent scholarship, includes a fuller narrative history, expanded sections on the history of women and slaves and on cultural life in the city of Rome, many new illustrations, an updated section of bibliographical notes, and other improvements designed to make the volume as useful as possible to students as well as the general reader.
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Martin Goodman is Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford. He is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has written numerous books, including The Ruling Class of Judaea (1987) and Rome and Jerusalem: the clash of ancient civilizations (2007).
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4. Kelly, Christopher. The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2006.
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The Roman Empire was a remarkable achievement. It had a population of sixty million people spread across lands encircling the Mediterranean and stretching from northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates, and from the Rhine to the North African coast. It was, above all else, an empire of force–employing a mixture of violence, suppression, order, and tactical use of power to develop an astonishingly uniform culture.
Here, historian Christopher Kelly covers the history of the Empire from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, describing the empire’s formation, and its political, religious, cultural, and social structures. It looks at the daily lives of the Empire’s people: both those in Rome as well as those living in its furthest colonies. Romans used astonishing logistical feats, political savvy, and military oppression to rule their vast empire. This Very Short Introduction examines how they “romanised” the cultures they conquered, imposing their own culture in order to subsume them completely. The book also looks at how the Roman Empire has been considered and depicted in more recent times, from the writings of Edward Gibbon to the Hollywood blockbuster Gladiator. It will prove a valuable introduction for readers interested in classical history.
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Christopher Kelly is a University Lecturer in Classics and a Fellow and Senior Tutor of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He is a major contributor to Harvard University Press’ Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World and The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine.
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5. Lewis, Naphtali and Meyer Reinhold. Roman Civilization: Selected Readings, Vol. 2: The Empire. 3rd edition. Columbia University Press, 1990. (Sourcebook)
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Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold’s Roman Civilization is a classic. Originally published by Columbia University Press in 1955, the authors have undertaken another revision which takes into account recent work in the field. These volumes consist of selected primary documents from ancient Rome, covering a range f over 1,000 years of Roman culture, from the foundation of the city to its sacking by the Goths.
The selections cover a broad spectrum of Roman civilization, including literature, philosophy, religion, education, politics, military affairs, and economics. These English translations of literary, inscriptional, and papyrological sources, many of which are available nowhere else, create a mosaic of the brilliance, the beauty, and the power of Rome.
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Naphtali Lewis is professor of classical studies at Boston University.
Meyer Reinhold is University Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.
Both are distinguished classicists and have written numerous books and articles during their careers.
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