i am kind of embarassed about this but i dont know ANYTHING about roman ancient history, as i am more of WW2 guydoes anyone have any easy sources on Roman history for beginners?
This is a serviceble podcast that goes over the swath of Roman history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItwGz43a_ak&list=PLEb6sGT7oD8EdpWRp7oEgwvyZtFH4dFsCIt's rather dry and low production quality, but the information is a starting point.
>>18535237Start here anon.
>>18535237Livy isn’t difficult to read. Maybe read the Wikipedia article on Rome solely to get your bearings and then start at the beginning. Also the empire keeps going long after 476 and Byzantine history is kino, read Procopius
>>18535409How is it? Is it woke horseshit? Mary beard left an awful taste in my mouth.History of Rome Podcast on spotify is pretty good. Ads are annoying. Gibbon is dull but gets a laugh sometimes
>>18535237I think >>18535409 works just fine for an introduction. For primary sources, I'd go with Polybius, Sallust, Appian or Caesar as starts. Polybius especially, he covers a lot of the same ground as Livy in his later books but is a far better writer.
>>18535799Not woke, I wouldn't do that to another anon. Just a straightforward narrative. I also don't like Beard, find Duncan to be ok, and got chuckles from Gibbon. I think you would enjoy this book just fine. I did listen to it on Audible, narrator was good.
My understanding of Roman history is thus>there was 3, or 2, brothers? romulus was one, biggest dick, so the city was named after him>they gobbled some land and become a kingdom. elective? maybe?>there were a bunch of city states by this stage>rome beat them, including the biggest of them, the etruscans?>???????????>???????????>???????????>rome is now a republic ruled by a bunch of richfags and military generals>conquers italy>????????????>????????????>julius caesar is in charge and it isn't really a republic anymore but isn't an empire>he adopts a kid called octavius>names him his heir>julius gets stabbed>octavius succeeds him and is now an emperor>rome spends the next while expanding over much of europe and the middle east>uh oh barbarians or whatever>west has fallen>uh oh we accidentally crusaded eastern rome>uh oh turks>east has fallen>I guess we're russia now
>>18535790>>18535877you think one could straight up read some roman/greek? Wont those texts be very inaccessible to some retard like me>>18535409thanks anon>>18535799>>18535326not to be mean but i am not listening to some fat pedophile youtuber talking about how rome was socialist or whatever trannies do on youtube
>>18536027>west has fallen
>>18536118billions must die
Dont read Livy yet, its way to granular for somebody who knows 'not much'.If you are eager for primary sources read Florus' Epitome of Roman History, as far as I know this was one of the basic surveys used from medieval to Victorian times for Roman history.
>>18536109>Wont those texts be very inaccessible to some retard like meSome of then certainly are. I wouldn't recommend Livy to somebody completely new like the other guy. Polybius is far better for that, in fact he's probably one of the best historians of antiquity and he wrote for an audience which would have not known anything about the Romans. Appian is also probably a bit too much, Sallust and Caesar I remember being very easy reads, even if you just read the wiki pages for the event they cover as their works basically have a 'main protagonist' who is easy to follow. Caesar mentions himself constantly in his works so even if you don't wrap your head around most of the names, you'll still have him as a constant. Although, I'd probably read a summary before getting into them anyway, any general survey work should do the job, another anon recommended a really broad one, which should do. I've only read snippets of it but it looked good for an intro and his other works are nice so I can't see an issue in it.
>>18536109>thanks anonYou're welcome. It's a newer book, but covers the full history. Is easily accessible and doesn't require any knowledge of Roman history.For more specific periods of Roman history, I can't recommend Adrian Goldsworthy enough. He is the best author at toe-ing the line between scholarship and pop history. His punic wars book is straight up scholarly military history though, might save that for more advanced reading.
