Roman Civilization. Part 1

“It would hardly be found a person so frivolous and indifferent to life around him who would not be interested in the question of what means, what methods politics used by the Romans employed to conquer almost all the countries of the inhabited world and subject them to a single power in a period of less than 53 years— a fact unparalleled in history,” the ancient Greek historian Polybius remarked—and he was right.

How did Roman civilization begin? How did Rome conquer Europe and the Mediterranean? In his fundamental work “Roman Civilization,” the leading expert in the history of Ancient Rome, Robert Yuryevich Vyppers, provides a wide panorama of ancient Roman life in all its aspects—from the beginning of Roman civilization in the 5th century BCE to the later period of Augustus’s principate. The author describes in detail the conditions for the emergence of the great Roman Empire and shows why it became the foundation of what we today call Western civilization.