The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen (1856)

Sample: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-History-of-Rome-Book-1-Audiobook/B01EIKPI40

Book 1: Roman Origins Before the Monarchy
In 1902 the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Theodor Mommsen for his sensational work of history The History of Rome. Classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist, and writer, Mommsen is generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the modern era. To this day his work on Roman history is still of fundamental importance among scholars. There has never been anything like it, and there may never be again.
Mommsen's history, first appearing in 1856, differs from the 18th-century work of Gibbon in the important respect that Mommsen begins his story in the centuries before the monarchy and ends it with the death of Julius Caesar. It is a dramatic historical tour de force of Republican Rome. (Gibbon takes up his work where Mommsen leaves off.)
The History of Rome is divided into five books, of which this is the first. Book one begins in the dim prehistory of Latium and describes the society that emerged there in the centuries leading up to the establishment of the first Roman king. This penetrating look at emerging Latin culture takes us into the strange world of their religion; their family structure; and their legal system, trade, alliances, and relationships with neighboring tribes and kingdoms. It brilliantly sets the stage for what is to come in the following volumes.
Although Mommsen used the A.U.C. system of Roman years, which begins as the Roman year one (754 BC), we have transposed these dates to those of the Christian era. All dates are BC except where otherwise indicated.
Translated from the original German by William P. Dickson.


Sample: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-History-of-Rome-Book-2-Audiobook/B01FMRY5OW

Book 2: From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy
Book two of Theodore Mommsen's history begins in 509 BC, when the last Roman king was expelled and a republican form of government was formed. Starting here, we trace Rome's political and cultural development under an aristocracy whose puritan fanaticism is legendary. But security from surrounding hostile tribes was of uppermost concern, and the city was constantly at war with one tribe or another.
During the fifth century BC, the Republic's energies were directed toward uniting or subduing her nearby Latin-speaking neighbors. By the beginning of the fourth century BC, Rome was in control of a Latin league. Following the devastating sack of Rome in 390 BC by a Celtic tribe that descended from the Po Valley, the Republic quickly recovered and resumed its confrontation with neighboring tribes. By mid-fourth century the Etruscans to the north, the Sabines to the east, and the Volscians and other Campanian tribes in the south have been reduced. Only the mighty Samnites in the Apenines remained. After a war of almost 35 years, they surrendered.
But in 280 BC the Italian Greek city-states become alarmed and invited the leading Greek general of the day, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, to be their champion. Thus began a grinding five-year war between Greek phalanxes and Roman legions. By 272 BC the last Greek city in Italy had capitulated, and Italy was united under Roman hegemony.


Sample: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-History-of-Rome-Book-3-Audiobook/B01I5VYXO4

Book 3: From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States
Book three of Mommsen's history covers the 118 years from 264 to 146 BC, the period in which Rome became the undisputed master of the Mediterranean Basin. How did this happen, and why?
Carthage was instrumental in this transformation. With the defeat and expulsion of Pyrrhus in 275 BC, Rome had moved to consolidate its hold over the Italian peninsula, a position it had acquired in a century of almost continuous warfare with Italian tribes. But only 11 years later, in 264 BC, the political and commercial rivalry with Carthage over control of Sicily broke out into open war. At the end of two brutal wars with Carthage and three with Macedonia and the Greek Seleucid and Antigonid Kingdoms, the Mediterranean lay in the power of Rome. It was not a power the Roman state had consciously sought. In its fanatical zeal for security, Rome subdued one adversary after the other with unerring determination. In the end there was no one left to subdue.
But along with that power came wealth and social changes that were to tear the republic apart. Mommsen's brilliant explanation for how this process of decay sapped the moral fiber of the Roman people is perhaps his most outstanding contribution to our understanding of this era.
This is the third in a five-volume series. This volume was recorded entirely on location in Rome, Italy. Listeners may notice some differences in sound compared to our usual studio recordings.


Sample: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-History-of-Rome-Book-4-Audiobook/B01KIF8RBK

Book 4: The Revolution
Book four of Mommsen's history covers the period from the middle of the second century BC through the first few decades of the first century BC, about 80 years. It is a sad and woeful tale.
By the middle of the second century BC, the city of Rome was spiraling toward bankruptcy and moral decay. The generation which had defeated Hannibal and brought the Mediterranean under Roman control had now passed away, even as gold poured in. Hardly a Roman name of any note appears for half a century. The noble Roman has disappeared. The once feared Roman army has become a mere shadow of its former self, and the public have come to accustom themselves to news of shattering defeats against Spanish and Celtic armies, and of battles in which Romans have thrown down their arms and fled. Not a single trireme was left of the once invincible Roman navy. Meanwhile, the capitalists brought tens of thousands of slaves into Italy, buying up farmland with cheap loans, and driving the yeoman farmer backbone of the old Roman army off the land. This was the situation into which the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus emerged. Both paid for their attempts at reform with their lives. An oligarchy then ruled with ruthless determination, until the rise of Gaius Marius ushered in an era of unspeakable violence and outright revolution. With Rome's overseas possessions falling away and her Italian allies in open revolt, it would seem that Rome must fall. But the man of the hour proved to be Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and only by his courage and ability was the situation saved. As Sulla entered Rome in 83 BC, the 500-year-old Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill burned to the ground; an ominous portent.


Sample: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-History-of-Rome-Book-5-Audiobook/B01LYGQP6X

Book 5: The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
Book five of Mommsen's history of the Roman Republic brings to a conclusion this most magnificent of historical narratives.
It begins with the death of Sulla and ends with the accession to power of the greatest and most fascinating Roman of them all, Gaius Julius Caesar.
With the aristocrat Sulla's premature and unexpected death, the Populares (democrats) plotted their comeback. But the senatorial democrats lacked charismatic leadership and no longer had a Marius or Gracchus to call upon. The democrats needed a senator with renowned military experience and glory, something which the senatorial aristocracy (the Optimates) also lacked. Both factions turned to the young, promising general, Pompey, fresh from his successful campaign in Spain. Initially, Pompey chose the democrats. But political instability soon returned. Social unrest had become the disagreeable norm. And with the rise of the incomparable Julius Caesar, the people finally found the leader they were waiting for. Followed by Caesar's conquest of Gaul, the display of his ingenious executive skills, and his advocacy of public-minded reform, Caesar emerged as the necessary and welcomed leader in the movement toward resolution of the sorry and bloody debacle of debt, aristocratic privilege, and civil strife.
Eventually, civil war became inevitable when Pompey accepted the leadership of the Optimates, the oligarchic faction which was in deadly opposition to the common people. By accepting this leadership, Pompey vaulted to the head of a party dedicated to the material interests of Rome's wealthy bankers, merchants, and landed gentry who looked favorably on a dictatorship which protected their interests. But Caesar was too quick for Pompey, and prevailed in the subsequent bloody civil war. His victory ushered in an incredible series of reforms which were to shape Roman affairs for another 500 years. Caesar's dictatorship became the model of a military monarchy which guided the Roman Empire until its demise.

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