The story of the Roman empire, from the beginnings to the crisis of the Middle Ages: why it was so large, why it was so durable, and why it was different from any other empire before or since.
Greg Woolf is Director of the Institute of Classical Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Formerly Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews, he has held visiting appointments in France, Germany, Italy, and Brazil, and he has lectured widely around the world. He has published research on a wide range of topics in ancient history and Roman archaeology, including ancient literacy, European prehistory, the Roman economy, and ancient patronage. He maintains an interest in the comparative historical sociology of ancient empires. More recently he has been working on ancient science, in particularly ethnography, and on Roman religion, and he was awarded a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, for a project on the origins of religious pluralism. His previous publications include Et tu Brute? The murder of Caesar and political assassination (2006) and The Life and Death of Ancient Cities (2020).