Imperial Tragedy cover art

Imperial Tragedy

From Constantine’s Empire to the Destruction of Roman Italy AD 363-568

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Imperial Tragedy

By: Michael Kulikowski
Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

For centuries, Rome was one of the world's largest imperial powers, its influence spread across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, its military force successfully fighting off attacks by the Parthians, Germans, Persians and Goths. Then came the definitive split, the Vandal sack of Rome and the crumbling of the West from Empire into kingdoms first nominally under Imperial rule and then, one by one, beyond it.

Imperial Tragedy tells the story of Rome's gradual collapse. Full of palace intrigue, religious conflicts and military history, as well as details of the shifts in social, religious and political structures, Imperial Tragedy contests the idea that Rome fell due to external invasions.

Instead, it focuses on how the choices and conditions of those living within the empire led to its fall. For it was not a single catastrophic moment that broke the Empire but a creeping process; by the time people understood that Rome had fallen, the west of the Empire had long since broken the Imperial yoke.

©2019 Michael Kulikowski (P)2019 Audible, Ltd Ancient Rome Italy Military Middle Ages Royalty Africa Middle East

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Burgundians cover art
Small Island cover art
Empire of the Black Sea cover art
The Water Margin cover art
The Thirty Years War cover art
The Eagle and the Lion cover art
Byzantium cover art
Iranian History cover art
Rural Rides cover art
Twilight Cities cover art
The Histories cover art
Theoderic the Great cover art
History of France cover art
Railways and the Raj cover art
French History cover art
Italian History cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Well written narrative of events that really paint a picture of the end of the Roman Empire. The narrative focus can be a bit of a flurry of facts, names & titles in quick succession that can bit too much to take in a couple of times throughout the book. The conclusions towards the end of the book are very good but it misses some of the early ones you'll find in Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire. I think reading this & Heather's book will give all angles.

Narration is decent, the narrator clearly makes the effort to research pronunciations which is refreshing. Minor quibble but it's very obvious from inflections that a large chunk of the book was re-recorded. That or a lot of breaks were required. Even mid sentence the narrator's voice can change. This will annoy some I am sure but I am happy to accept this in return for correct pronunciations & it is noticeable without being annoying I think.

Solid narrative focused run through

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really enjoyed this book. The author is very convincing in his judgements, and tells an exciting narrative history.

Very entertaining.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very interesting but not realistic. The phrase ‘’we don’t know’’ comes up a lot, but then will make deductions it simply cannot know.

Woke Revisionist

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.