The Roman Republic

Description

Between the Sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC and the middle of the second century BC, a part-time army of Roman peasants, under the leadership of the ruling oligarchy, conquered first Italy and then the whole of the Mediterranean. The loyalty of these marrauding heroes, and of the Roman population as a whole, to their leaders was assured by a share in the rewards of victory, rewards which became steadily less accessible as the empire expanded - promoting a decline in loyalty of cataclysmic proportions. Wars, rural impoverishments, civil discord and slavery are a few of the subjects covered in this study.

Michael Crawford was born in Twickenham in 1939, and educated at St Paul's School and Oriel College, Oxford. He was made a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge in 1964, and was a university lecturer in ancient history from 1969 until 1986. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Pavia, Milan, L'Aquila and Padua, and at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and he was made a fellow of the British Academy in 1980. Since 1986 he has been Professor of Ancient History at University College London. Amongst his other books are Roman Republican Coinage (1974), Sources for Ancient History (1983) and Coinage and Money under the Roman Republic (1985).