Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

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Your task, Roman, and do not forget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world in your empire. These will be your arts – and to impose a settled pattern upon peace, to pardon the defeated and war down the proud.

Vergil, Aeneid

So power and greed ran riot, contaminated and pillaged everything, and held nothing sacred or worthy of respect until [the Romans] plunged themselves to their own destruction.

Sallust, War with Jugurtha

FOREWORD

Rome was a city founded on murder. In 753 BC the twin brothers Romulus and Remus – at the head of a small band of exiles and malcontents – dug the defences of the tiny village that was to become the capital of an empire that stretched from Scotland to the Sahara and beyond. But excitement soon turned to tragedy. The brothers quarrelled, and Romulus killed his twin.

More problems were soon to follow. Romulus had only a handful of supporters. So where were the citizens for the new city to be found? The answer was: from all-comers. Romulus declared his city an ‘asylum’, and welcomed any exiles, refugees, runaway slaves and criminals who chose to take up residence. Rome was a city populated entirely by, in the ancient sense of the term (which is not so very far from our own), asylum-seekers.

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