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Imperial Tragedy

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

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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
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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

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I really enjoyed this book. The author is very convincing in his judgements, and tells an exciting narrative history.

Very entertaining.

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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

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