The fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire, not that Rome wasn't already an Empire when the Republic fell. Built on slavery, it celebrated liberty, but how could you appreciate liberty without lots of slaves deprived of their liberty to contrast with your? Such was the mindset of the Romans, according to this immensely readable book, and it is one of a number of paradoxes that fueled the Roman's drive to take over the world, usually with thinly justified pre-emptive strikes against anyone who was even vaguely threatening or disrespectful, then robbing and enslaving and squeezing the survivors unmercifully, creating enormous wealth and opportunities for corruption. Which was, to the Roman mind, as it should be.

I admit my sense of the history of Rome is vague and spotty, filled with cinematic and televisual pageantry rather than a solid conception of its general shape. Still, so much of this is familiar, so many names echoing out of the past, and it's nice to have it brought more sharply into focus. Extraordinary men rise and do extraordinary things to great praise and adulation, then the extraordinary men are brought low, because Rome loves extraordinary men, it just doesn't like them. A swirling vortex of rising and falling leads almost inevitably to chaos and anarchy and a brutal and deadly struggle. The story is often garish and lurid and unimaginably brutal and violent. It's also fascinating and compelling. Holland creates a driving narrative, and while one is automatically suspicious of narratives imposed on history, still it grabs the attention and does not let go.