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According to Wikipedia: "Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737[1] – January 16, 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The History is known principally for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open denigration of organized religion, though the extent of this is disputed by some critics"
You canget all six volumes as a single file for the Kindle.But some people prefer to read and navigate through smaller files, hence I'm also posting it as one file per volume. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1787 edition by J. J. Tourneisen, Basil. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

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Publisher: Cambridge, University pressPublication date: 1914Subjects: History, AncientNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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In this highly original work, Christopher Kelly paints a remarkable picture of running a superstate. He portrays a complex system of government openly regulated by networks of personal influence and the payment of money. Focusing on the Roman Empire after Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Kelly illuminates a period of increasingly centralized rule through an ever more extensive and intrusive bureaucracy.

The book opens with a view of its times through the eyes of a high-ranking official in sixth-century Constantinople, John Lydus. His On the Magistracies of the Roman State, the only memoir of its kind to come down to us, gives an impassioned and revealing account of his career and the system in which he worked. Kelly draws a wealth of insight from this singular memoir and goes on to trace the operation of power and influence, exposing how these might be successfully deployed or skillfully diverted by those wishing either to avoid government regulation or to subvert it for their own ends. Ruling the Later Roman Empire presents a fascinating procession of officials, emperors, and local power brokers, winners and losers, mapping their experiences, their conflicting loyalties, their successes, and their failures.

This important book elegantly recaptures the experience of both rulers and ruled under a sophisticated and highly successful system of government.

Customer Reviews (2)

Almost Perfectbut for the Beginning
This is not just one more book with a re-writting of a widely known old piece of history with more or less good and entertaining prose. This is the real thing, an important work of dilucidation, a book situated, I would say, in the field of erudite, specialized academic history. It opens a vast field of knowledge an understanding not only about the proceedings of later Roman Empire,but of the antiquity conception of public service in general,its rol in the overall ruling of the empire,his connection with privileged classes, etc. In brief, what from a modern point of view appears as corruption or badly handled management, in Kelly's book appears as constitutive, esential part of the imperial state.
If I do not put 5 stars, but four, it is because of the beginning of the book. It is too much detailed respect specific transactions of a department of the Bizantine administration and so often becomes almost unbearable boring. Once this part is left behind, everything improves dramatically.
Esential book for antiquity amateurs and professional historians the same.

The best scholarly work I've read in a long time
This is a wonderful book. I was particularly impressed by the layout and sheer readability of it: it begins by showing us the later Roman Empire through the eyes of John Lydus, an imperial bureaucrat in Constantinople who wrote (c.522AD) about the decline of the administration. Peter Jones has rightly called this a 'masterstroke', and indeed it makes more accessible a period of Roman history that rarely gains the attention in deserves.

On the whole the book is incredibly informative and stylistically perfect, not only readable in the best sense of the word but also highly enjoyable. Dr Kelly writes in an impeccably precise way with a subtle undertone of wit, a style which holds the attention and elucidates the finer points of a complex period of history. The book is now my Bible of the later Roman Empire. ... Read more

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This book discusses minting and financial policy in the first three centuries of the Roman Empire. By studying Roman coin-survivals in a wider context, the author uncovers important facts about the origin of coin hoards of the Principate. The resulting analyses use extensive coin material collected for the first time. Dr. Duncan-Jones builds up a picture of minting, financial policy and monetary circulation that adds substantially to our knowledge and that stands as the only study of its kind for this period. ... Read more

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The Economy of the Greek Cities offers readers a clear and concise overview of ancient Greek economies from the archaic to the Roman period. Léopold Migeotte approaches Greek economic activities from the perspective of the ancient sources, situating them within the context of the city-state (polis). He illuminates the ways citizens intervened in the economy and considers such important sectors as agriculture, craft industries, public works, and trade. Focusing on how the private and public spheres impinged on each other, this book provides a broad understanding of the political and economic changes affecting life in the Greek city-states over a thousand-year period. ... Read more

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This book aims at describing something of the life and wor , of the thought and conditions, that existed during the first three centuries of the Roman Empire. The author provides the average reader with a general sketch, enriched by frequent quotations, of what the inhabitants of the Empire thought and said. ... Read more

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A practical approach to the earth sciences, Roman Empire helps kids reach a deeper understanding of historical peoples by participating in the activities that shaped their lives. Discover the past by hands-on projects, facts, photographs, costumes, and maps. A comprehensive look at this topic for children ages 8-11. ... Read more

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Wonderful kid's history resource
Written in a style to appeal to elementary age, filled with actual color photos of historical artifacts, along with beautiful scenes recreated with clay and wood, etc, to look like a scene from the Roman times.Numerous projects, from very simple, to more complex.All photo illustrations with people are elementary age kids, modeling the art projects as though a real picture of ancient times.My 6-year-old son spent hours looking at and reading this book.Makes history fun! ... Read more

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In Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire, William Johnson examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The investigation proceeds in case-study fashion using the principal surviving witnesses, beginning with the communities of Pliny and Tacitus (with a look at Pliny's teacher, Quintilian) from the time of the emperor Trajan. Johnson then moves on to explore elite reading during the era of the Antonines, including the medical community around Galen, the philological community around Gellius and Fronto (with a look at the curious reading habits of Fronto's pupil Marcus Aurelius), and the intellectual communities lampooned by the satirist Lucian. Along the way, evidence from the papyri is deployed to help to understand better and more concretely both the mechanics of reading, and the social interactions that surrounded the ancient book. The result is a rich cultural history of individual reading communities that differentiate themselves in interesting ways even while in aggregate showing a coherent reading culture with fascinating similarities and contrasts to the reading culture of today. ... Read more

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It is widely recognized that Roman law is an important source of information about women in the Roman world, and can present a more rounded and accurate picture than literary sources. This sourcebook fully exploits the rich legal material of the imperial period - from Augustus (31 BCE - 14 CE) to the end of the western Roman Empire (476 CE), incorporating both pagan and Christian eras, and explaining the rights women held under Roman law, the restrictions to which they were subject, and legal regulations on marriage, divorce and widowhood. The main focus is on the major legal texts (the Digest, the Institutes of Gaius, the Code of Justinian and the Theodosian Code), but a significant number of non-legal documentary sources are included. These are particularly important as they illustrate how the law worked in practice, and how this practice (particularly in the provinces) could differ from the letter of the law. Accessible English translations are enhanced by clear, concise background material, which includes useful explanation of historical and geographical context, and a helpful glossary of Roman legal and administrative terms completes the volume. Comprehensive and user-friendly, this will be a core text for students, an illuminating aid for non-specialists, and an essential reference guide for more advanced scholars ... Read more

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This boxed set of Volumes 4-6 ("The Eastern Empire") completes the Everyman set. Volumes 1-3 ("The Western Empire") were published in 1993. Even after 200 years, Gibbon's book is still an authoritative work on Roman history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Great edition, great value
I'll spare the review of the work itself; if you don't know why you should read Gibbon, then this isn't the place to start. If you're going to put forth the effort, however, then this is the edition to get. Contains all the footnotes (lacking in some expensive leather editions), is reasonably priced, and is attractively bound. The only other edition to consider would be Wormsley's, which can be expensive in hard back, if you can even find it. If you want to have an edition to read and display, this is it.

Misleading and wrong shipment
Your description does not indicate the only volumes 4-6 will be shipped.I would never had ordered it if I had known this.In addition, the package I received had three volumes but two of the volumes were the same, namely, volume 5.I received volumes 4, 5 and 5.I shall try to straighten this out with Horizon Books.

My next review will describe how this problem was handled.

Buyer Beware!
This is the definitive Gibbons edition; but the description DOES NOT tell you that this is VOLUME 4-6 and that VOLUME 1-3 MUST BE PURCHASED SEPARATELY. This WHOLE set that MUST be bought SEPARATELY is nonetheless very good and worthy of being a part of one's library! ... Read more

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This compact book--which appeared earlier in the multivolume series A History of Private Life--is a history of the Roman Empire in pagan times. It is an interpretation setting forth in detail the universal civilization of the Romans—so much of it Hellenic—that later gave way to Christianity.

Customer Reviews (1)

Great explanation of daily life
The language in this book is translated very well and is easy to read.I looked everywhere for a book that described daily life in Ancient Rome without going into the girty details of war and politics.This book accomplished all that.I highly recommend "The Roman Empire". ... Read more

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In the first half of the fifth century, the Latin-speaking part of the Roman Empire suffered vast losses of territory to barbarian invaders. But in the Greek-speaking half of the Eastern Mediterranean, with its capital at Constantinople, there was a stable and successful system, using Latin as its official language, but communicating with its subjects in Greek. This book takes an inside look at how this system worked in the long reign of the pious Christian Emperor Theodosius II (408-50), and analyzes its largely successful defense of its frontiers, its internal coherence, and its relations with its subjects, with a flow of demands and suggestions traveling up the hierarchy to the Emperor, and a long series of laws, often set out in elaborately self-justificatory detail, addressed by the Emperor, through his officials, to the people. Above all, this book focuses on the Imperial mission to promote the unity of the Church, the State's involvement in intensely-debated doctrinal questions, and the calling by the Emperor of two major Church Councils at Ephesus, in 431 and 449. Between the Law codes and the acts of the Church Councils, the material illustrating the working of government and the involvement of State and church, is incomparably richer, more detailed, and more vivid than for any previous period. ... Read more

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Byzantophiles take note
Fans of Byzantine history usually find all aspects of the subject fascinating. Certainly, I loved this book, which offered new perspectives beyond narrative history.The role of Latin in the governance of the empire is one of the most interesting topics- and it was most intriguing to be introduced to a document with Theodosius II's handwriting on it. Highly recommended. ... Read more

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Reprint of the 1912. Oversized octavo. Book xv, 530 p. London, Macmillan and Co., 1912. John Bagnell Bury was born in county Monaghan Ireland and studied at Trinity College Dublin, holding academic posts there and at Cambridge. He was both a classicist and a byzantinist and, for much of his career, a strong believer in the 19th century ideas of rationalism and progress. Bury was without doubt one of the most outstanding Byzantinists of his age. He was a scholar of great range and unusual learning, with a marked capacity for penetrating and critical analysis and a characteristically disciplined and austere approach. According to Bury, history must follow the methods of the natural sciences, stressing the exact determination of facts, rather than functioning as a branch of literature. This title is one of the most comprehensive on the 65 year period from the Fall of Irene to the Accession of Basil I. This is one of his more important works. ... Read more

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Coinage and History of the Roman Empire is an invaluable study in the fields of Roman history and numismatics. Current scholarship is invoked throughout as a corrective to other published sources: hundreds f significat updates in chronology, historical perspective and numismatic attribution make this book indispensable.

The book consists of two volumes: volume one, History; volume two: Coinage. The 550-year period covered- The Imperatorial Age: c. 82-27 B.C; and The Roman Empire: 27 B.C to A.D 480- is divided into twelve epochs, each prefaced with an overview of the period's social and historical developments. Coinage and History of the Roman Empire is fully illustrated (including family trees, tables, maps) and includes an extensive bibliography as well alphabetical and chronological indexes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Modern Classis -- History & Coins
This is a monumental work by numismatist Vagi that must be on the shelf of every collector of ancient Roman Coins.The set comes in two volumes, the first one "History" which is a chronological collection of biographies of individuals represented on or who issued coins from the Social War of 91-88 BCE to Julius who last struck coins in the West until 280 CE and Zeno in the East to 491 CE.The second "Coinage" will be strictly of interest to numismatists and covers Roman coinage of the same period.

Both volumes are excellent and essentially unrivaled although there are other coin references such as the five volume set by Seaby or "The Emperors of Rome and Byzantium" by Sear that are also classics in their own right.

Since so much Roman history is contained in or inferred by its coinage, an historian needs to supplement and correct the classical Roman histories from the likes of Dio Cassius or Appian with evidence from coinage.Although Vagi's work is obviously not intended for the general reader, it is an excellent reference for anyone interested in Roman history.

I cannot understand why anyone would give these volumes less than five stars.

A double resource for Roman history and Roman coins
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.

A double resource for Roman history and Roman coins
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. ... Read more

Product Description
A complete history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, chronicling the story of the most important and influential civilization the world has ever known, with an authoritative account of power and classical Rome's influence on Western culture. Over 10000 photographs & other illystrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Handy Roman History book.
I find myself constantly picking up this handy book for reference on parts of roman history I'm hazy about. If your the kind of person who loves ancient war movies, or fell in love with the HBO series Rome, then you will be flipping through this book more than just a few times! I loved this book so much I've tried to see other books released by this publisher, but I couldn't find many others. With information on the publisher a little elusive, the book is great non the less. Many books have been released to serve as a summary about Rome. with lots of pictures to inform the casual reader. However I have found that most of them zap my interest half way through, this book is is strong where the others have failed. I recommend it!

A Definitive Tome
First of all, be warned that this IS a very good book, make NO mistake about it. Actually, it's a compilation (with additional material) of the first 2 smaller volumes by the same author.
Yet, it is SO much more.

I would have to classify this right up there alongside Gibbons Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire...only this book includes beautiful illustrations and artwork from the history of one of the greatest periods of mankind.

There are way too many pluses to go into detail about here, but if you take a few minutes to thumb through this book when you see it, you will most certainly want to add this to your library.

My wife teaches Latin, and finds this an invaluable source for teaching, discussion, and the culture that was Rome.

This is a POWERFUL work, and as we all know:
"Scientia est potentia"
(knowledge is power)

... Read more