West of Rome

West of Rome
Author: John Fante
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2010-05-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062013181

West of Rome's two novellas, "My Dog Stupid" and "The Orgy," fulfill the promise of their rousing titles. The latter novella opens with virtuoso description: "His name was Frank Gagliano, and he did not believe in God. He was that most singular and startling craftsman of the building trade-a left-handed bricklayer. Like my father, Frank came from Torcella Peligna, a cliff-hugging town in the Abruzzi. Lean as a spider, he wore a leather cap and puttees the year around, and he was so bowlegged a dog could lope between his knees without touching them."

Rome West

Rome West
Author: Brian Wood
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1506704999

An alt-history account of the founding of America, as a lost fleet of Roman soldiers arrives a thousand years before Columbus. In AD 323, a fleet of Roman ships is lost in a storm, and they find themselves on the shores of the New World, one thousand years before Columbus. Unable to return home, they establish a new colony, Roma Occidens, radically altering the timeline of America and subsequent world events as seen through the eyes of one family. An exploration in alternative history from Brian Wood, Justin Giampaoli, and Andrea Mutti.

Through the Eye of a Needle

Through the Eye of a Needle
Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 806
Release: 2013-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400844533

A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman Empire Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

The Birth of the West

The Birth of the West
Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2013-02-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 161039013X

A narrative history of the origins of Western civilization argues that Europe was transformed in the tenth century from a continent rife with violence and ignorance to a continent on the rise.

The End of the Past

The End of the Past
Author: Aldo Schiavone
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674000629

THIS SEARCHING INTERPRETATION of past and present addresses fundamental questions about the fall of the Roman Empire. Why did ancient culture, once so strong and rich, come to an end? Was it destroyed by weaknesses inherent in its nature? Or were mistakes made that could have been avoided -- was there a point at which Greco-Roman society took a wrong turn? And in what ways is modern society different? Western history is split into two discontinuous eras, Aldo Schiavone tells us: the ancient world was fundamentally different from the modern one. He locates the essential difference in a series of economic factors: a slave-based economy, relative lack of mechanization and technology, the dominance of agriculture over urban industry. Also crucial are aspects of the ancient mentality: disdain for manual work, a preference for transcending (rather than transforming) nature, a basic belief in the permanence of limits. Schiavone's lively and provocative examination of the ancient world, "the eternal theater of history and power", offers a stimulating opportunity to view modern society in light of the experience of our forebears.

Rome

Rome
Author: Greg Woolf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199325189

A major new history of the spectacular rise and fall of the ancient world's greatest empire

Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West

Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004473572

This illustrated book is a coherently conceived collection of interdisciplinary essays by distinguished authors on the city of Rome and its contacts with western Christendom in the early Middle Ages (c. 500-1000 AD). The first part integrates historical, archaeological, numismatic and art historical approaches to studying the transition of the city of Rome from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and offers groundbreaking new analyses of selected sites and problems. Attention is given to the economic, social, religious and cultural history of the city. In the second part of the volume historical, archaeological, liturgical and palaeographical approaches address Rome's contacts and influence in Latin Christendom in this period, with particular regard to Rome's place within Italian politics and its cultural influence in Carolingian Francia and Anglo-Saxon England.

The Fall of Rome

The Fall of Rome
Author: Bryan Ward-Perkins
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2006-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191622362

Why did Rome fall? Vicious barbarian invasions during the fifth century resulted in the cataclysmic end of the world's most powerful civilization, and a 'dark age' for its conquered peoples. Or did it? The dominant view of this period today is that the 'fall of Rome' was a largely peaceful transition to Germanic rule, and the start of a positive cultural transformation. Bryan Ward-Perkins encourages every reader to think again by reclaiming the drama and violence of the last days of the Roman world, and reminding us of the very real horrors of barbarian occupation. Attacking new sources with relish and making use of a range of contemporary archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans, in a world of economic collapse, marauding barbarians, and the rise of a new religious orthodoxy. He also looks at how and why successive generations have understood this period differently, and why the story is still so significant today.

Escape from Rome

Escape from Rome
Author: Walter Scheidel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 698
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691216738

The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world? In an absorbing narrative that begins with ancient Rome but stretches far beyond it, from Byzantium to China and from Genghis Khan to Napoleon, Scheidel shows how the demise of Rome and the enduring failure of empire-building on European soil launched an economic transformation that changed the continent and ultimately the world.

Sultans of Rome

Sultans of Rome
Author: Warwick Ball
Publisher: Olive Branch Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781566568487

It has become conventional to think of the Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 as an Asiatic conquest. The Turks originated in Asia—it is true—but Constantinople was conquered from the west not the east: the Ottomans became a European power before they became a Middle Eastern one and remained a primarily European power. Indeed, the Middle East and even most of Anatolia itself was conquered from Europe. This demonstrates that it was no sudden rush of semi-civilized horse-riding nomads from the steppe, but the culmination of complex movements that had seen Turkish dynasties establish glittering monuments and cities throughout Asia. And when Turks first entered Anatolia in the 11th century, it was a Byzantine Emperor who made a relatively minor Turkish prince the first Sultan in the land that would come to be known as Turkey—a prince, furthermore, who called himself not Sultan of Turkey, but Sultan of Rome! Few people, therefore, combine so thoroughly the legacies of Europe and Asia, East and West, the civilizations of Greece and Rome with that of Islam, the Near East and beyond. Few have bridged so many civilizations; have brought so many cultural strands together. Their story is as much our history as well as theirs and others