This is the usual Osprey book with the usual text by David Nicolle and the usual artwork by McBride. Definitely not McBride at his best.

Usual Men-At-Arms series quality, lots of pictures, interesting historical background. Covers North Africa (Numidia, Nubia), Syria (Palmyra), Mesopotamia (Hatra), Arabia (Nabateans, Lakhmids and Yemenis) and a good bibliography.

This is an excellent place for someone who knows some Latin, but isn't an advanced student of the language, to start Horace (it worked for me, anyway). There's a brief,tantalising introduction to the poet's life and times, well-printed Latin texts and accurate but fluid English translations that leave just enough unsaid to puzzle the reader into thinking further (as Horace does himself in the Latin). The commentaries are well-written, accessible to all, and don't skip the difficulties. There are good notes on the metres, though putting them at the end of the book is a pity - too much flitting backwards and forwards is needed, and a non-latinist who is also not a musician might need a bit more explanation of how to apply them. The other commentaries (e.g. Nisbet and Hubbard) are cited and put into context where they're useful. The Odes, explained like this, are a revelation, and you may find yourself (as I did) involuntarily and painlessly memorising phrases or even whole verses of the Latin while reading through. Perhaps you'll also be stimulated to try out your own English verse translations of some of the poems. Very occasionally West has a rather eccentric interpretation of a word or image, but he always flags his own unorthodoxy, and in general he translates and explains clearly and modestly - you can disagree with him when you need to, without feeling patronised or let down. Above all, West transmits his strong affection for the very likeable Horace, whose tone he describes well, and often captures - a tone that moves quickly from light, worldy-wise irony to a serious view of fame, heroism, love, friendship and death, and back again to caustic wit, like clouds flitting quickly across a windy summer sky. The poems make you want to go and live in Ancient Rome - or rather, in the campagna outside it. These are some of the finest and most perfect poems ever written. So get a good Lewis and Short dictionary (that's the only important bit missing from the book) and "Carpe diem" - pluck the day.

David L. Vagi's "Coinage and History of the Roman Empire" is perhaps reminiscent of the god Janus, facing in two directions at once. Volume One is squarely focused on history, Volume Two on coins.

Taking the History section first, this lengthy (over 600 pages) and physically impressive volume contains biographical essays about every person portrayed on a Roman coin (and even a couple who were not), 284 biographies in all. Although a few are limited to a single paragraph because virtually nothing is known of the person except for their appearance on a coin, most are multiple-page essays covering everything from origins to ultimate fate (and in the case of a good many Roman emperors, their fates were anything but happy). The biographies are arranged primarily on a chronological basis, beginning with Sulla who became Dictator in 82 BC and concluding with Leo, Caesar under Zeno in the eastern Empire in AD 477. The essays are grouped into chapters with such titles as "Collapse of the Republic (Imperatorial Period)" and "Civil War and the Severan-Emesan Dynasty", with each chapter prefaced by a separate essay providing a historical survey of events in that period. In all, more than five centuries of Roman history are covered. Many of the individual biographies include a "Numismatic Note" section specifically addressing information about or gleaned from the coin's bearing that subject's image. Volume One might be considered to be a counterpart of historian Michael Grant's "The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to Rulers of Imperial Rome", long a favorite of mine for its handiness as a source for quickly providing basic information (and more) about each emperor. Vagi's Volume One not only serves as an equally convenient source with additional material, but also provides such information about a broader range of personalities. By itself, I would rank Volume One as a 5-star production.

Volume Two is specifically geared towards numismatics, with over 180 pages devoted to discussions of various aspects of the coins: types, physical characteristics, how and where made, collecting, etc. The bulk of the volume, however, is given over to a catalog of Roman coins, including statements of value based upon grade of condition. It is here where Vagi's book may be considered short of some other Roman coin resources, depending on the needs of the individual reader. Because many of the coins for any given person depicted are grouped as being a generic or common type, with only the more interesting or rare coins given an individual listing, Vagi's numerical classification scheme may not deemed adequate by many serious collectors because it fails to differentiate between similar types which are given separate identification numbers in other sources. Vagi also limits himself to providing price range estimates for only three grades, typically Fine, Very Fine, and Extremely Fine. Within these limitations, however, Vagi's catalog is easy to use and does quickly provide a general guide to a given coin's scarcity and worth.

This is surely not a work aimed at the general reader, and it is in some regard unfortunate that the first volume is not separately available for those concerned with Roman history, but not Roman coins. But for those have a strong interest in both, Vagi's "Coinage and History of the Roman Empire" should be a welcome addition to their bookshelves.

This is a supplement for 2nd edition D&D that covers the historical period of the Roman empire and translates roman myths and folklore into D&D terms.

It provides a good timeline for the empire, an okay section on roman adventures and the roman world, but the great section is the 2nd edition class and kit write ups. It provides for political soldiers, gladiators, oratory before the Senate, street thugs in the capitol city, witches, and priests for all the ectsasy cults and Roman gods. It is set in a low magic background as are all the historical settings but the magical details are great including the three witch spells it includes (dream curses, love charms and protective amulets).

It seems to be an unspoken agreement amongst Roman historical murder mystery authors to have a murder mystery involving the Vestal Virgins. Wishart goes one step further, blatantly drawing parallels to the Bona Dea scandal of 63 which tends to misdirect the reader who is aware of that historical event, perhaps deliberately. So, with the inevitable comparisons to JMR and Davis, amongst others, aside, Marcus Corvinus moves into his latest novel with an easy familiarity.
Last Rites deals with another consular-level murder, Marcus being called in to discreetly investigate the death of the Vestal Cornelia during the Bona Dea rites. A reluctance for the senior protagonists to admit to anything that would indicate scandal leads us a dance through the subsequent suicide of Marcus Lepidus -Cornelia's childhood friend, and the deaths of Cornelia's maid Niobe, a fluteplayer who wasn't present at the rite, Thalia, the original assassin, and an unfortunate member of the Watch, Chiro. There is the usual mix of accompanying characters, headed by the senatorial family comprising Marcus Lepidus Senior, his overtly promiscuous daughter Lepida and the fateful Marcus Lepidus Junior. The tight-lipped Vestal community headed by Junia Torquata and the immediate affiliates of the consul Galba all serve ensure this is one murder mystery that has Marcus delving into the highest echelons of Roman society. However Marcus spends the few days running up to Saturnalia picking his way through Rome's murky politics and assorted colorful characters with a dry wit that makes for fluid reading.
All this, mixed in with Marcus' daily home trials, epitomised in this novel by a very amusing episodic dealings with Perilla's latest fad of a water clock and the delightful continuing development of the character of Bathyllus, means that Last Rites is another excellent offering from Wishart.
I must confess I managed to read White Murder before this one and this novel confirms Wishart's tendency to use Rufia Perilla as Marcus' 'sounding board' to both recap the day's events and to outline theories. It is faintly annoying as it implies the author is keen to ensure we don't miss a single clue and, rather than allowing us to theorize ourselves, dictates that we follow Corvinus' thought process to the letter.
That aside, what Wishart does so well is mix murder and Roman politics so well, spending considerable time providing plausible motive for each crime, which is what makes Marcus Corvinus' installments so fascinating. Highly recommended.

This is a really wonderful collection of poetry. Flipping through these pages proved to be a most rewarding experience. I can not say that it will replace Whitman and Dickinson in the classroom but it is a sweet volume of Tibetan verse nevertheless. I had read Warriors Path To Enlightenment and was familiar with Trungpa through his friendship with Allen Ginsberg. This purchase was a whimsical choice and it has been duly rewarded. The poems are honest and heartfelt. There are little pearls of zen wisdom as well as some that bear the influence of Ginsberg and of Jack Kerouac. A poem like Missing The Point does anything but. I was enthralled by poems like Completely Intoxicated By You and I Miss You So Much. Trungpa seemed to possess a certain purity of thought that I admire in poetry. I would recommend this book to poetry afficianados as well as persons with an interest in Asian arts and culture. It is a fine collection.

I read this book to try to get an idea of who Caeser was, what his accomplishments were, and how the Roman Republic was transformed into an Empire. While this book did fulfill those goals, it was difficult to finish. To his credit, Meier drives home important points about his subject: the influence of Sulla, the importance of the achievement ethic, the paradox of the reactionary regime, so forth. But much of the book is not very understandable or interesting to a reader who is not avidly versed in Roman Republican history. In this sense, while I thought the book too long and drawn out, I would almost need to read it again to get most of the authors points! So, this is a good second book on Caesar, not the introduction I was hoping for. Finally, the end is quite abrupt, as only a few pages are dedicated to explaining the adoption of Augustus and Caesar's assasination, and Meier does not summarize well the lasting effect Caesar's legacy had on the Empire to be.

Meier considers his book a "scholarly biography," but it's intended for a general audience -- in omitting footnotes and even a bibliography, for example, he already sets his book apart from the usual scholarly studies. Meier has clearly done a great deal of research and thinking on the subject over a long period of time, and he readily presents the conflicting theories behind many events in and facets of Caesar's life. If you're looking for a detailed military analysis of "Caesar the General" and his campaigns specifically, this isn't it. The book is part biography, part character analysis; while the latter is always dangerous when dealing with a titanic historical figure like Caesar, Meier never stoops to the kind of superficial psychoanalysis that too often plagues biographies dealing with great figures from antiquity (such as Alexander the Great). He bases his ideas on the ancient sources and the work of prominent scholars throughout history. Meier's many questions and hypotheses are always considered and balanced, and often more than intriguing -- particularly interesting to me is the way in which he contrasts Caesar as a mover of events and as one being moved along by them at various times in this turbulent period. I often got the impression that I was reading the work of a scholar who was happy to free himself from the usual academic restraints and was simply letting all of his ideas and questions out of the bag, and that's refreshing. Meier does a fine job of synthesizing the life and career of a complicated, restless man and the development of a very complex era into a readable and fascinating book -- he covers all the various aspects of Caesar's life in a balanced way (the brilliant general, the ambitious politician, the shrewd diplomat, the writer, etc.). It's a bit plodding in spots, and it would help the reader to know the basic outline of the period before delving into the book, but overall it's a great read. This is one of the best biographies of Caesar available. My only gripes are the total absence of ANY references and the sloppy editing of this edition: the former was Meier's choice, the latter the oversight of the publisher of this edition.

Caesar, by Christian Meier is a no nonsense treatise on the life of Julius Caesar and the political maelstrom which surrounded it. Here, Meier strips the veneer away to show a man truly great, but also truly flawed.

From Caesars birth to the inevitable Ides of March, Meier educates, analyzes, and explains the person, the time, and the place with remarkable skill and detail. This isn't an edge-of-your-seat sort of reading experience. Instead, it is a comfortably patient, thought provoking book of tremendous scholarly value. Meier artfully avoids a teleological viewpoint striving successfully to explain what Caesar, Cicero, Cato, Pompey, et al, thought and saw then. We note clearly that their experience was much different than what we might see through 2000+ years of reflection.

Of particular interest is the juxtaposition between the Republic of Rome and Caesar. His thirst for recognition and the weakness of the Senate to shunt it presents paradox after paradox as Caesar struggles to control the political game. In the end, both Senate and Caesar submit to an undesired civil war. From there, the power struggle continues as does the edification of the reader.

Though the book may plod in places, these instances are brief and rare. It is well worth the time of any serious reader interested in early Rome and one of the most famous men in recorded history.

This volume exposes that much of the teaching of the Roman 'Catholic' teaching is not complementary to the thinking of the church fathers and that in fact much of it contradicts their doctrine. I admire William Webster for taking a humble and loving approach to this work. It is not an offensive polemic like so many works against Roman Catholicism. He simply states the facts and documents them. He includes 7 appendices that are direct quotations from Roman documents: quotes from church fathers, the Council of Trent, Vatican I and II and various other declarations. These alone are worth the price of the book. The topics that Webster examines are, the Apocrypha, the relation of Scripture to tradition, the papacy, Marian dogma, the Sacramenatal System, the Eucharist, and faith and justification. He challenges Rome's claim's "not by debating texts of Scripture but by a straight appeal to the very area where the Church of Rome believes her case is strongest, the facts of history". I would suggest this book for anyone who is examining Roman 'Catholicism'. Polite and informative.

Having abandoned any hope of finding justification for their belief system in the Bible, Roman Catholics have turned to their perception of the beliefs of the early church fathers. It now appears that they will have to abandon those as well and retreat completely to some sort of theory of development that doesn't rely on history and is unfalsifiable. William Webster cites and documents the opinions of many prominent early church fathers with regards to several uniquely Roman Catholics views, and convincingly demonstrates that their opinions are quite dissimilar to modern Roman Catholicism.

In addition to providing devastating critiques of Rome's claims, I feel Webster's book also serves as a wake up call to sleepy Protestants that are ignorant of church history. Many of us are aware of the inability of Roman Catholic apologists to exegete Scripture and their tendency to proof text to make their point, so it should come as no surprise that Roman Catholics treat church history the same way, picking and choosing those quotations that seem to support their view, while ignoring context and the author's true intent. The problem is, most Protestants don't seem to be aware of this. This book will inspire you to learn more about church history. I recommend Roger Olson's The Story of Christian Theology, which is available here at amazon. It is not Protestant polemic, however, it will help you better realize the incompatibility of the facts of history with the "truths" of Roman Catholicism. Armed with the knowledge that Rome's final justification attempt for its claims is invalid, God may be able to use you to bring Roman Catholics back to the gospel of grace.

This book is a must read for those who are unaware of the actual extent to which historic church fathers disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church's claims on various matters of dogma. This is very important for a number of reasons: 1) The Roman Catholic Church has claimed a place as the only true legitimate church intended by Christ. 2) The Roman Catholic Church has claimed that its doctrines were universally taught by early church fathers. 3) The Roman Catholic Church insists on adherence to its dogma as requisite for salvation.

William Webster does not solely rely on openly debatable or elusive scripture passages to make his case. More impressively, Webster takes a look at the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church "on its own turf" as he quotes from the early church fathers and demonstrates how they contradicted the teachings of the Roman Church. This is a powerful argument against a church which relies on the unanimity of consent of historical early Christian Church leaders as a basis for its own credibility and divine authority.

Roman Catholics who are honest seekers of historical truth regarding the claims of their own church will appreciate the non-combative, matter-of-fact manner in which historical facts are objectively presented in this book. This is definitely not an "in your face" anti-Catholic book. Non-Catholic Christians who question Roman Catholic claims to supremacy and having an unbroken, consistent chain of theological thinking and dcotrine throughout history will appreciate the informative, concise, and organized presentation of the real historical truth.

Webster begins the book establishing the debate between Sola Scriptura (Bible alone) as a basis for Christian teaching, versus scripture and "tradition." He then moves on to discuss the papacy, and how various dogmas such as Papal Infallibility, Marian Dogmas, the priesthood, Penance, the Eucharist, and Justification changed and evolved throughout the centuries. The book also contains excellent appendices and notes.

An excellent, informable resource and a must for anyone's apologetics library.

i hate this book! if i owned it, i would burn it! the only reason i have it is because i have to use it at school! its so bad, i have to get extra tutoring out of school! even my tutor says its bad! i dont think we should be taught latin through force, cos it is a dead usless range of nonsense! even my teachers admitted they hate latin, one quoted "its a job, isn't it?" if you want to learn latin, do no buy this book! it is a waste of money! oh yeah, and uit asking me how old i am! im 13 so lay off my case!

I wanted to learn latin and I had no idea what i was doing when I purchased another set of books to learn latin.I was on Amazon and I saw these books, so I decided to try them out. I literally taught myself how to speak and read latin. These books give you a reference a story in latin and a picture on almost every page. Instead of throwing words and prefixes you learn by associating the words with things in the scenes. You realize that some words are similar to english and other romantic languages. After about a year I had the basics down. I could now read sentences of latin clearly. Something that would have taken me at least two years to do without these books.

This book tells the interesting story of a family living in ancient Rome one year after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The vocabulary is not too complicated to learn and the grammer starts very easy and gradually works its way into the hard stuff. I have used books one and two. Next year I will be working with book three. So far I have enjoyed the stories and learning the Latin language with this book series.

I ordered this book for my undergraduate Roman history class before I realized what a piece of crap it was. Get Michael Grant's book instead, or Cary and Scullard's, old as it is. Anything else: I spend valuable time in class and outside it propping up this book because of its many defects. The text consists of a mishmash of poorly-organized subheadings, randomly-inserted series of bullet points and "feature" boxes. There is no sense of the big picture, which is so important for undergraduates, and no way of assessing which material is more important, and which is trivial (and there's a lot of trivial material in here.) One of my colleagues calls it "dog barf": a mix of subjects with no organization or overarching analysis. The writing is filled with phrases in quotation marks that have no sources cited -- exactly what I tell my students NOT to do in their papers. The translated French sentences with their long series of subclauses and odd syntax are difficult reading. The images are if possible even worse. The text refers to objects like the warrior of Capestrano as if everyone were expected to know what it was (why would they be taking Roman history if they did?) which are not illustrated. There is no map which shows where Dacia, Pannonia, or Germania are, all regions which are hugely important in understanding the empire. The periodically inserted plans of Rome (whose references reveal they are essentially xeroxed from other people's books) mark the outlined buildings with numbers, but nowhere is there a KEY. I can't believe the editors passed this thing twice. I'm going to scrutinize offerings from Blackwell much more carefully from now on.

Marcel Le Glay et al's History of Rome was the first History book on Rome I read. The book was relatively well written, and took an interesting look on Rome's decline. Unfortunately, it focused largely on the Leaders and the royal/imperial families of Rome; the book tended to focus more on their lives then on the Roman Empire's history itself. The section on Augustus was thorough and very interesting. The middle and end of the book were especially good, but the beginning lacked detail. There is an absence of information on this part of Rome's history, and the book tended to breifly talk about important events during those 500 years. The book's examination on the culture of the Roman Empire I find is much too succinct. For its brevity it was excellent; it is admirable that one can write such a tasteful book in such small space. If one wants a helpful guide to the entire history of Rome pick up this book.

This book truly got me reading more in depth in Roman History. I've read other Roman History books for instence, The Roman Empire by Colin Welles, and Roman Provincial Administration by J. S. Richardson and this was in a league of its own. Le Glay and compatriots made A History of Rome very enjoyable. Truthfully, I had a hard time putting the book down. This book deserves 5 stars.