Rome

The modern world has the ancient Romans to thank for the origins of many modern technologies, conveniences, and ideas, from running water, baths, and republican style government to roads. Similarly, by the 3rd century BCE, the Romans were prodigious monument builders, so much so that the memory of the great Roman Republic and the Roman Empire continues to exist within a cityscape of stone.

Discourses on Livy, written in 1531, is as essential to understanding Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state. Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli with a consistent point of view in all his works. Machiavelli's close analysis of Livy's history of Rome led him to advance his most original and outspoken view of politics--the belief that a healthy political body was characterized by social friction and conflict rather than by rigid stability.

Discover the remarkable history of the Fall of the Roman Empire... At its height, the Roman Empire was the largest and most powerful empire ever seen in the Western world. It covered 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of territory, where a population of over 80 million was protected by a disciplined, well-trained army of almost half a million troops. By the third century, the empire had become so vast that it was effectively divided into two parts: the Western Empire, including the city of Rome, and an Eastern Empire governed from the city of Nicomedia in present-day Turkey.

Discover the remarkable life of Mithridates VI Eupator... Have you ever heard of Mithridates VI Eupator? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t—the name doesn’t exactly roll right off your tongue. Nevertheless, Mithridates was indeed one of the mightiest leaders of the ancient world. This was a man who made himself immune to poison by consuming deadly toxins daily, earning him the nickname “the Poison King.” He spoke over twenty languages fluently and ruled an empire that stretched from the Black Sea coast of Anatolia to the distant shores of Crimea.

For six hundred years, the city of Carthage dominated the western Mediterranean. Founded in the ninth century BCE as a small colonial outpost, by the third, it had grown into the area's largest, richest empire. When, inevitably, it clashed with Rome for supremacy over the region, the conflict spanned over one century, three wars, and forty-three years of active fighting. After Carthage fell, the city was razed, and the tale of its defeat became a mere foundation stone in Rome's legend.