The Neverending Empire
The Infinite Impact of Ancient Rome
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Publisher Description
From the international bestselling author and notable journalist Aldo Cazzullo comes a brilliantly researched and extremely accessible journey through the history and legacy of the Roman Empire.
“The only way to narrate over a thousand years of history is to understand what it has left us. To tell the reasons, the things and the stories, thanks to which Roman civilization is alive”.
From its mythical foundations and epic construction to its enduring historical and cultural impact, the ancient Roman Empire has long fascinated readers across the world. In The Neverending Empire esteemed Italian journalist Aldo Cazzullo describes an exciting new historical perspective: that the Roman Empire never fell. In fact, its influence reaches further and deeper than ever.
Beginning with the origins of Rome, and the literary myth of Aeneas and Romulus, Cazzullo takes the reader on a page-turning voyage through ancient history, bringing to life the most captivating moments and characters of a dominant Empire: the republican age, with heroic men and women willing to die for their country. The adventure of coup plotters like Catiline and revolutionaries like Spartacus, the slave who inspired rebels of every age. The extraordinary stories of Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus, two of the greatest leaders to have lived.
Cazzullo goes on to draw fascinating parallels between the ancient and modern world, revealing how Rome lives on, across every facet of life and society. The ancient Romans have inspired poets, and artists, from Dante to Hollywood. They have dictated the rules of war, architecture, language and law. They have inspired America’s democratic influence and the digital revolution led by Mark Zuckerberg, a great admirer of Emperor Augustus: the first man to lead a multi-ethnic community of people who didn’t know each other but shared language, images and culture.
From the Napoleonic to the British regimes, the ideas and philosophies of ancient Rome have been much imitated, but never surpassed. This is the remarkable story of an enduring Empire. An Empire that never died. An Empire that lives on, forever.
About the author
Aldo Cazzullo is an Italian reporter and journalist of 35 years, and current deputing managing director of Corriere della Sera in Milan. He has published thirty books on history and Italian identity and has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. The Neverending Empire is his first book published for international audiences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
More than any other ancient civilization, the Roman Empire continues to inform modern understandings of government, according to this ardent historical appreciation. Journalist Cazzullo, in his English-language debut, argues that Rome is the main source of today's political ideas ("liberty," "dictator," "citizen," "justice," "conspiracy," and "socialism" come from Latin words, he notes), contemporary institutions like senates and elections, and a successful—if highly unequal and unjust—model of a multicultural superstate that presaged later societies like the British Empire. The heart of Cazzullo's book is an episodic tour of Roman history that begins with its legendary heroes, brutal men of action who personify Roman ideals of integrity and self-sacrifice. The pageant of illustrious Romans climaxes with Julius Caesar—"perhaps the greatest man to have ever lived," Cazzullo ventures. (Emperors who followed Caesar and his nephew Augustus, palpably lesser mortals in Cazzullo's telling, pass by in a brief montage of sordid cruelties and well-deserved assassinations.) Later chapters trace Rome's afterlives, including its inspiration for ambitious statesmen from Charlemagne to Napoleon. Although clear-eyed about Rome's faults, Cazzullo is an unabashed admirer—"We Westerners... are its unworthy descendants, and we should be prouder," he admonishes—and renders it in cinematic prose that highlights dramatic scenes and magnetic personalities. The result is a glamorous recreation of Rome's myths and reality.
