THE FOLIO SOCIETY

'The Romans,' wrote Livy with pride, 'are like no other people in the world.' In seven turbulent centuries of near-incessant warfare, the once tiny city-state overcame the mortal threats of neighbouring towns and tribes and embarked on an unparalleled career of conquest, rising to dominate the whole of the Mediterranean world, and beyond. What set the Romans apart was a voracious appetite and matchless stamina for war. By 146 BC, the two pre-eminent cities of the age, Carthage and Corinth, had been sacked by a part-time militia that was soon to become a formidable professional army and the terror of the age. A new world order - the Republic of Rome - had been declared. Yet, within a hundred years, the unprecedented task of governing such a vast empire had dragged that Republic into the cataclysm of civil war and military dictatorship which culminated in the assassination of 'Rome's sole creative genius': Julius Caesar.

Theodor Mommsen was one of the greatest historians of the 19th century, and his magnificent History of Rome - which won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902 - has become the cornerstone of all subsequent studies of the Roman republic. This single-volume edition of Mommsen's magnum opus presents all the defining events and towering personalities in Roman history from the foundation of the city to the sole rule of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, allowing us to experience the full drama of many of antiquity's most stirring moments: to face the fearsome charge of Hannibal's elephants, to stand with Scipio as Carthage perishes in the flames, to march with the legions across the Rubicon.