An Introduction to Ancient Rome

Abstract

The nearly 2000 years of the history of the Roman Empire is, without argument, one of the richest sources of information about human nature. This highly abridged version of the Roman experience, which concentrates only on the western part of the Empire, highlights aspects of the Roman experience—governance, politics, Rome’s imperialist motives, Romanisation, slavery, art and architecture, political economy, entertainment, education, philosophy, law, and religion—in order to (1) reveal creative responses to challenges of existence, and varieties of personality, disposition, and motivation that could define humanity; (2) illuminate the imperial dynamics that would implicitly account for the cultural and institutional changes in Africa as a consequence of Western imperial interventions.