Killing for the Republic

Killing for the Republic PDF Author: Steele Brand
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421429861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
How Rome's citizen-soldiers conquered the world—and why this militaristic ideal still has a place in America today. "For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans . . . succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history?"—Polybius The year 146 BC marked the brutal end to the Roman Republic's 118-year struggle for the western Mediterranean. Breaching the walls of their great enemy, Carthage, Roman troops slaughtered countless citizens, enslaved those who survived, and leveled the 700-year-old city. That same year in the east, Rome destroyed Corinth and subdued Greece. Over little more than a century, Rome's triumphant armies of citizen-soldiers had shocked the world by conquering all of its neighbors. How did armies made up of citizen-soldiers manage to pull off such a major triumph? And what made the republic so powerful? In Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand explains how Rome transformed average farmers into ambitious killers capable of conquering the entire Mediterranean. Rome instilled something violent and vicious in its soldiers, making them more effective than other empire builders. Unlike the Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians, it fought with part-timers. Examining the relationship between the republican spirit and the citizen-soldier, Brand argues that Roman republican values and institutions prepared common men for the rigors and horrors of war. Brand reconstructs five separate battles—representative moments in Rome's constitutional and cultural evolution that saw its citizen-soldiers encounter the best warriors of the day, from marauding Gauls and the Alps-crossing Hannibal to the heirs of Alexander the Great. A sweeping political and cultural history, Killing for the Republic closes with a compelling argument in favor of resurrecting the citizen-soldier ideal in modern America.

Killing for the Republic

Killing for the Republic PDF Author: Steele Brand
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421429861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
How Rome's citizen-soldiers conquered the world—and why this militaristic ideal still has a place in America today. "For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans . . . succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history?"—Polybius The year 146 BC marked the brutal end to the Roman Republic's 118-year struggle for the western Mediterranean. Breaching the walls of their great enemy, Carthage, Roman troops slaughtered countless citizens, enslaved those who survived, and leveled the 700-year-old city. That same year in the east, Rome destroyed Corinth and subdued Greece. Over little more than a century, Rome's triumphant armies of citizen-soldiers had shocked the world by conquering all of its neighbors. How did armies made up of citizen-soldiers manage to pull off such a major triumph? And what made the republic so powerful? In Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand explains how Rome transformed average farmers into ambitious killers capable of conquering the entire Mediterranean. Rome instilled something violent and vicious in its soldiers, making them more effective than other empire builders. Unlike the Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians, it fought with part-timers. Examining the relationship between the republican spirit and the citizen-soldier, Brand argues that Roman republican values and institutions prepared common men for the rigors and horrors of war. Brand reconstructs five separate battles—representative moments in Rome's constitutional and cultural evolution that saw its citizen-soldiers encounter the best warriors of the day, from marauding Gauls and the Alps-crossing Hannibal to the heirs of Alexander the Great. A sweeping political and cultural history, Killing for the Republic closes with a compelling argument in favor of resurrecting the citizen-soldier ideal in modern America.

Philippi 42 BC

Philippi 42 BC PDF Author: Si Sheppard
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 9781846032653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Immortalized in Shakespeare's play on the life and death of Julius Caesar, the battle of Philippi was the final battle between the forces of Mark Antony and Octavian against the forces of Caesar's assassins Brutus and Longinus during the Roman civil wars that took place in the 40s and 30s BC. Si Sheppard takes a detailed look at the campaign that was waged around the Macedonian city of Philipi. The first engagement on the 3rd of October was indecisive as Octavian's forces were routed by those of Brutus, but Cassius' camp was captured by Mark Antony's men; wrongly fearing that Brutus was dead and that all was lost for his cause, Cassius committed suicide - depriving the Republicans of their most gifted commander. In the meantime, the Republicans' naval forces had managed to intercept and destroy the supply ships of the Triumvirs in the Adriatic, a serious blow to Octavian and Mark Anthony. Expertly detailing the changing fates of the opposing sides, their successes and failures illustrated in a range of maps, the book then turns to the final stages of the campaign. As the Triumvirs' forces slowly moved their fieldworks towards their enemies' positions, Brutus, ignorant of the destruction of Calvinus's fleet and seeing few other options available to him, decided to give battle. In the bloody and close combat, legionary fought legionary amid great slaughter, until Brutus' forces were finally routed and his camp overrun. Brutus fled and committed suicide the following day. The Republican movement crushed, Rome now rested in the hands of the Second Triumvirate. This is the history of the Philippi campaign that sounded the final death knell for the Republican movement.

Augustus

Augustus PDF Author: Jochen Bleicken
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241003903
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 885

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Book Description
The great modern biography of Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire Born to a plebeian family in 63 BC, Octavian was a young solder training abroad when he heard news of Julius Caesar's brutal assassination - and discovered that he was the dictator's sole political heir. With the opportunism and instinct for propaganda that were to characterize his rule, Octavian rallied huge financial, military and political backing to eliminate his opponents, end the bloody turmoil that had so long wracked Rome and, finally, take autocratic control of a state devoted to republicanism. He became Augustus - Rome's first Emperor, and the founder of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. In this monumental biography, translated into English for the first time by Anthea Bell, Jochen Bleicken tells the story of a man who found himself a demi-god in his own lifetime and paints a portrait of one of the most dramatic periods of Roman history.

#7 Treaty of Brundisium - 40 BC (The Octavian Chronicles)

#7 Treaty of Brundisium - 40 BC (The Octavian Chronicles) PDF Author: Patrick Parrelli
Publisher: Patrick Parrelli
ISBN: 0984694269
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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Book Description
The seventh of the twelve 'Octavian Chronicles' telling the story of the 'Rise to Power' of Octavian, the adoptive son Julius Caesar. The story takes place in Ancient Rome. It begins in 44 BC with the assassination of Julius Caesar and ends in 27 BC when Octavian takes the name Caesar Augustus and becomes Rome's first emperor.

Plutarch: Life of Antony

Plutarch: Life of Antony PDF Author: Plutarch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521284189
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This edition will be of interest to all Greek scholars, ancient historians, and also the students of English literature since the relevant discussions require no knowledge of Greek.

Cicero, Philippic 2, 44–50, 78–92, 100–119

Cicero, Philippic 2, 44–50, 78–92, 100–119 PDF Author: Ingo Gildenhard
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783745924
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Cicero composed his incendiary Philippics only a few months after Rome was rocked by the brutal assassination of Julius Caesar. In the tumultuous aftermath of Caesar’s death, Cicero and Mark Antony found themselves on opposing sides of an increasingly bitter and dangerous battle for control. Philippic 2 was a weapon in that war. Conceived as Cicero’s response to a verbal attack from Antony in the Senate, Philippic 2 is a rhetorical firework that ranges from abusive references to Antony’s supposedly sordid sex life to a sustained critique of what Cicero saw as Antony’s tyrannical ambitions. Vituperatively brilliant and politically committed, it is both a carefully crafted literary artefact and an explosive example of crisis rhetoric. It ultimately led to Cicero’s own gruesome death. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, vocabulary aids, study questions, and an extensive commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Ingo Gildenhard’s volume will be of particular interest to students of Latin studying for A-Level or on undergraduate courses. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Cicero, his oratory, the politics of late-republican Rome, and the transhistorical import of Cicero’s politics of verbal (and physical) violence.

Mutina 43 BC

Mutina 43 BC PDF Author: Nic Fields
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472831195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
In the aftermath of the murder of Gaius Julius Caesar, his self-declared successor Mark Antony struggled to hold together his legacy. Following an abortive coup attempt by Caesar's adopted son Octavian, two of Antony's legions declared for him, leading to a renewed outbreak of civil war. Antony moved into northern Italy and invaded the city of Mutina, which was held by Decimus Brutus. There they were quickly sandwiched between the city walls on one side and the newly arrived Senate-backed forces of Octavian on the other. These two heirs of Caesar then fought to claim their former mentor's legacy. Fully illustrated with specially commissioned artwork and maps, this is the full story of the battles which would see Octavian move from being a young, inexperienced aristocrat to the dominating figure of Augustus.

The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War

The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004409521
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War is part of a burgeoning new trend that focuses on the great impact of stasis and civil war on Roman society. This volume specifically concentrates on the Late Republic, a transformative period marked by social and political violence, stasis, factional strife, and civil war. Its constitutive chapters closely study developments and discussions concerning the concept of civil war in the late republican and early imperial historiography of the late Republic, from L. Cornelius Sulla Felix to the Severan dynasty.

Britannia AD 43

Britannia AD 43 PDF Author: Nic Fields
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472842081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
For the Romans, Britannia lay beyond the comfortable confines of the Mediterranean world around which classical civilisation had flourished. Britannia was felt to be at the outermost edge of the world itself, lending the island an air of dangerous mystique. To the soldiers crossing the Oceanus Britannicus in the late summer of AD 43, the prospect of invading an island believed to be on its periphery must have meant a mixture of panic and promise. These men were part of a formidable army of four veteran legions (II Augusta, VIIII Hispana, XIIII Gemina, XX Valeria), which had been assembled under the overall command of Aulus Plautius Silvanus. Under him were, significantly, first-rate legionary commanders, including the future emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus. With the auxiliary units, the total invasion force probably mounted to around 40,000 men, but having assembled at Gessoriacum (Boulogne) they refused to embark. Eventually, the mutinous atmosphere was dispelled, and the invasion fleet sailed in three contingents. So, ninety-seven years after Caius Iulius Caesar, the Roman army landed in south-eastern Britannia. After a brisk summer campaign, a province was established behind a frontier zone running from what is now Lyme Bay on the Dorset coast to the Humber estuary. Though the territory overrun during the first campaign season was undoubtedly small, it laid the foundations for the Roman conquest which would soon begin to sweep across Britannia. In this highly illustrated and detailed title, Nic Fields tells the full story of the invasion which established the Romans in Britain, explaining how and why the initial Claudian invasion succeeded and what this meant for the future of Britain.

The Octavian Chronicles

The Octavian Chronicles PDF Author: Patrick J. Parrelli
Publisher: Patrick Parrelli
ISBN: 0984694323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 853

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Book Description
Editorial Review Author and historian Patrick J. Parrelli creates a spellbinding, historically exacting work of creative nonfiction in The Octavian Chronicles. An adventurous undertaking, this meticulously researched epic is cross referenced with the ancient writings of Appian, Suetonius, Plutarch, and Dio. After Caesar is assassinated in 44 BC and Octavian learns that Caesar adopted him as his son in his will, he sets out on a path of vengeance that does not end until he takes his place. With engaging subplots that chronicle key figures like Antony, Cleopatra, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, Agrippa, and Herod the Great, these twelve chronicles detail with in depth insight the military battles of Mutina, Philippi, Perusia, Naulochus, and Actium, serving as possibly the most readable narrative to unravel the complex story of how Octavian came to be Caesar Augustus, Romes first emperor. Also available in a series of 12 eBook Chronicles that are derived from this full eBook.