Naphtali Lewis (1911–2005)

An anthology of excerpts from classical historians and from inscriptions describing the history and to some degree the culture of Rome from its founding to the reign of Augustus. You must already know the history of Rome at least in outline: this collection is like a set of travel snapshots to accompany a guidebook. I hope purists won't sneer, but I read this alongside Colleen McCullough's novels (The First Man in Rome and The Grass Crown) to provide some scholarly balance to her terrific show more dramatization. show less

An anthology of excerpts from classical historians and from inscriptions describing the history and to some degree the culture of Rome from its founding to the reign of Augustus. You must already know the history of Rome at least in outline: this collection is like a set of travel snapshots to accompany a guidebook. I hope purists won't sneer, but I read this alongside Colleen McCullough's novels (The First Man in Rome and The Grass Crown) to provide some scholarly balance to her terrific show more dramatization. show less

I read these volumes in college while taking Roman history courses. I thought they were great companions to the introductory courses I was taking. The ably introduced documents, authors and excerpts contained were plenty to help a novice student make sense out of the more well developed theories of my professor.

Julius Caesar through Claudius had "privileges granted to the Jews of the Diaspora" (p. 395), as they did under the Persians and the Seleucids. "After the Jewish rebellion of 66-70 AD, however, Vespasian canceled the tax privileges" (p. 395) and thereafter the monies collected no longer went to the support of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem but instead was collected for the Temple of Jupiter in Rome.