18 Sept 2026
Rome: An Empire's Story with Greg Woolf
In our interview with Greg Woolf, we chat all about the second edition of his book Rome: An Empire's Story. What's the book about? Well, It's a total history of Rome. It starts with the 8th century BCE, when it's just a scatter of villages, which we only know through archaeology, and it ends up at the 8th century CE, when Arab armies have conquered Egypt and Syria and swept along North Africa and plunged into Spain. For some hundreds of years, the northwest has been ruled by German Kings and so on. I start from a tiny city on the river and end up with a tiny city on the Bosporus and in between, it sort of expands and contracts, just not back to the same point.
We know quite a lot more about very, very early Rome and quite a lot more about late Rome. For early Rome, there have been some studies on how Rome in the centuries before there's any local writing or local history writing, how it interacts with other Italian people. Again, naturally, that's the story that also owes a lot to archaeology. So, we have new accounts of that which are not just the Legends of Romulus and Remus and Aeneas and so on, but it's also stories about how different communities up and down the Italian Peninsula come together, form alliances. You can, if you like, see some of early Rome, not so much as one plucky little people conquering all their neighbours, but actually almost as a sort of process by which different groups of local allies sort of pull it together. And, of course, Rome still reigns at the centre, but you see how the vested interests of landowners and chiefs and warlords all come together to create a kind of, Italy wide project
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Rome: An Empire's Story
by Greg Woold
https://www.worldhistory.org/books/0190687452 (https://www.worldhistory.org/books/0190687452)
— FURTHER READING, SUGGESTED BY GREG —
Archaeologists keep producing more information about the Roman World. Look at http://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-room-of-the-slaves-the-latest-discovery-at-civita-giuliana/ for a stunning example, the first slave-quarters found at Pompeii. (http://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-room-of-the-slaves-the-latest-discovery-at-civita-giuliana/%20for%20a%20stunning%20example,%20the%20first%20slave-quarters%20found%20at%20Pompeii.)
Natural science is changing the way we think about the past. This multidisciplinary team from Yale link massive eruptions of Alaskan volcanoes to traumatic change in the Roman Mediterranean
https://news.yale.edu/2020/06/22/climate-change-and-rise-roman-empire (https://news.yale.edu/2020/06/22/climate-change-and-rise-roman-empire)
Roman historians now understand migration better than ever before and relate it to modern experience. https://theconversation.com/immigration-how-ancient-rome-dealt-with-the-barbarians-at-the-gate-109933 (https://theconversation.com/immigration-how-ancient-rome-dealt-with-the-barbarians-at-the-gate-109933)
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— ATTRIBUTIONS —
The music used in this recording is the intellectual copyright of Michael Levy, a prolific composer for the recreated lyres of antiquity, and used with the creator's permission. Michael Levy's music is available to stream at all the major digital music platforms. Find out more on:
https://www.ancientlyre.com (https://www.ancientlyre.com)
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7Dx2vFEg8DmOJ5YCRm4A5v?si=emacIH9CRieFNGXRUyJ9 (https://open.spotify.com/artist/7Dx2vFEg8DmOJ5YCRm4A5v?si=emacIH9CRieFNGXRUyJ9)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ1X6F7lGMEadnNETSzTv8A (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ1X6F7lGMEadnNETSzTv8A)
World History Encyclopedia
www.worldhistory.org (www.worldhistory.org)
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