Fagan Garrett G. The History of Ancient Rome. Course Guidebook

Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 1999. — 206 p.In the regional, restless, and shifting history of continental Europe, the Roman Empire stands as a towering monument to scale and stability; at its height, it stretched from Syria to Scotland, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, and it stood for almost 700 years. So enormous was the Roman achievement in forging and maintaining this vast empire that the idea of Rome has left a lasting impression on the European psyche. Subsequent rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon to Hitler were motivated to some degree by emulation of the Roman model, and if the modern movement to unify Europe under a single currency and guiding bureaucracy succeeds, it will be the first genuine and lasting realization of such emulation in 1,400 years. Under Rome, people on three continents — in Europe, Africa, and Asia — gave their allegiance to a single political system, were governed by a unified set of laws, and were members of a distinct cultural community, despite their often profound linguistic, religious, and regional diversity.
So grand was the power of the idea of Rome even in ancient times that the tribesmen who destroyed the Empire in the west often called themselves Romans, and Europe has seen some form of the Holy Roman Empire for most of its subsequent history. By no means insignificant also is the huge cultural debt that Europe and the world owe to Rome in so many fields of human endeavor, such as art, architecture, engineering, language, literature, law, and religion.
In this series of lectures we examine how a small village of shepherds and farmers rose to be the colossus that bestrode the known civilized world of its day and came to leave such a lasting mark on European history.