This sweeping history of the Roman Empire from 44 BC to AD 235 has three purposes: to describe what was happening in the central administration and in the entourage of the emperor; to indicate how life went on in Italy and the provinces, in the towns, in the countryside, and in the army camps; and to show how these two different worlds impinged on each other. Colin Wells’s vivid account is now available in an up-to-date second edition.

• Contents 
• Preface to the Second Edition
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• I 
• The New Order
• II 
• The Sources
• III 
• The Work of Augustus
• IV 
• Italy under Augustus: the Social and Intellectual Climate
• V 
• The Consolidation of the Principate
• VI 
• The Army and the Provinces in the First Century AD
• VII 
• ‘Emperors Made Elsewhere than at Rome’: Galba to Trajan
• VIII 
• The State of Italy from Petronius to Pliny
• IX 
• The Orderly Government of the Empire: Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius
• X 
• ‘The Immeasurable Majesty of the Roman Peace’
• XI 
• An Age of Transition: Commodus to Maximinus the Thracian
• Maps
• Lists of dates
• Reigns of Roman Emperors, Augustus to Diocletian
• Greek and Latin Authors Mentioned in this Book
• Further Reading
• Index of Citations
• General Index