H. H. Scullard (1903–1983)

Over the course of more than a year, I read this excellent Roman history one chunk at a time. It was well worth it. For good reason this is Scullard's most well known work. It is thorough, interesting and covers that important transition period of Roman history. He begins with the agrarian struggle which leads to the tottering and dysfunctional late Republic. This eventually settles into the successful constitutional settlement of Augustus and a well managed empire. Eventually, though Tiberius and Claudius were worthy successors of Augustus, Caligula and Nero bring about the moral and political collapse of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Scullard's chronology ends with the chaotic "Year of the Four Emperors". Chapters on literature, society, religion and the arts were enlightening though inescapably superficial surveys of the times. Like many ancient histories, Scullard extrapolates from outside of the covered time periods to supplement his generalizations. My heart longs to read this book again because there are so many fascinating characters in there. Knowing how long it took me to get through this once and how many other books distracted me from staying on task, I'm going to leave it alone and wait for the right moment and allow Scullard to distract me from some other book I'm trying to plow through.… (meer)