The Rise of Rome

Polybius, a Greek hostage in Rome in the second century BC, wrote his Histories to explain how Rome subdued the Mediterranean in about fifty-three years. This selection covers the First and Second Punic Wars, Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, Cannae, and the recovery that ends in the defeat of Carthage, together with Roman dealings in Greece and the East. He pauses to analyse the mixed Roman constitution, army organisation, and the cycle of governments. The work is a pragmatic political and military history, not a biography of Hannibal and not a later imperial chronicle.

Three-quarter bound in dark red buckram with a Modigliani paper side printed with a monochrome eagle detail. Black slipcase.