Roman Empire

Unlike Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar had to deal with rivals as ambitious and influential as himself; and S. Usher finds that he has left a lucid account of his rise to greatness.

Not until three years after the fall of Jerusalem did Zealot resistance come to a bloody end. S.G.F. Brandon reviews the history of this fanatical sect, whose exemplary devotion and fortitude modern Israelis seek to emulate.

David Francis Jones describes how, among primitive peoples encountered by the Romans, the fair-haired, blue-eyed Celts made a particularly deep impression.

In dealing with her often refractory Jewish subjects, writes E. Mary Smallwood, Rome followed a policy of toleration and protection but insisted that the Jews must “repay toleration with toleration.”

E. Mary Smallwood asserts that when trouble broke out between rulers and subjects, the fault did not always lie with the Roman administration.

After the sack of Rome by the Goths in the year 410, the Roman world experienced some of the unease that afflicts Western civilization today; S.G.F. Brandon describes how the late Roman world found assuagement in the writings of Saint Augustine.

By the year 129 B.C., writes D.R. Dudley, the Stoic philosophy was firmly established among the ruling classes of Rome in a form cut to suit the Roman virtues.

S. Usher introduces Sallust, himself a disillusioned politician, who envisaged no future greatness for Rome until a single man of vision should have restored the old Republican sense of obligation—the individual's obligation to the state, and the state’s obligation to the world at large.

James Shiel introduces Jerome, a charming letter-writer and worldly-wise mentor of fashionable proselytes, a learned theologian and fiery controversialist. He lived through a critical period in the history of Western civilization, when the Church established its authority and Rome was sacked by a barbarian foe.

Gnosticism was one of those developments of religious thought that, although finally rejected by Christians as heretical, played a major part in the formation of Christian theology during the first three centuries of the Church’s life, writes S.G.F. Brandon.