"This book provides a short but comprehensive political history of ancient Rome from the origins of the city in the Italian Iron Age to the deposition of the last emperor in A.D. 476. The reasons for Rome's conquest and absorption of Italy, and how this gave the Romans a manpower reserve that allowed them to conquer the Mediterranean in half a century, are described. The military responsibilities attendant upon these conquests undermined the political institutions of the Republic, with the Emperor Augustus managing to set up surreptitiously a monarchical form of government, in effect securing two centuries of peace. New military pressures then caused a significant change in the structure of the Imperial government, which eventually succumbed in the west to invasion. The influence on the imperial government of the adoption of Christianity as the state religion is also discussed."--Jacket.