THE ROMANS

Rome’s lasting power.

Watts, professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, has devoted a career to this subject, including six earlier histories of the period. He writes well and is not shy about expressing mildly startling opinions. Scholars and Romans themselves date Rome’s beginnings to the eighth century B.C.E.; Watts agrees but discards its traditional end, 1453, when the Turks conquered Constantinople, arguing for 1204, when European Crusaders sacked and conquered Constantinople. He moves quickly through the first 500 years, when a tribe along the Tiber fought other pugnacious tribes and expanded its influence so that by 280 B.C.E. its power encompassed all of Italy. Surviving accounts emphasize war and bloody political infighting, invariably preceded by long speeches—inspirational by heroes and devious by villains—which the author quotes at length without endorsing their accuracy. Readers will perk up when the republic, a clunky but effective democracy, conquers Europe, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Loot, trade, and immigration brought wealth as well as rich culture to Rome, providing irresistible temptation to ambitious men. By 100 B.C.E., corruption, coups, and civil wars had so blighted the Republic that Julius Caesar, who destroyed it, comes across as an admirable figure, along with his adopted son, Augustus, who launched the Empire on a high note in 27 B.C.E. Watts agrees with three centuries of scholars who dubbed 27 B.C. to 180 C.E. the Pax Romana, an era of peace and prosperity, but dislikes the description of what followed as “decline and fall.” He argues that during those 1,300 years the empire flourished under talented emperors such as Diocletian in the third century and Alexius I Comnenus in the 11th, but there is no doubt that incompetents outnumbered them.

Edward Gibbon and Mary Beard lead a crowded field, but this is a fine addition.