Bibliography
for the Roman Empire.

General works

The whole empire

• Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. London: Profile, 2015.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016.
• The Cambridge Ancient History. 14 vols, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970–2005. The scholarly standard reference.
• Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 6 vols, 1776–1789. Modern edition: ed. David Womersley, London: Penguin, 1994. The eighteenth-century classic; still readable, still widely cited.

Chapter I — Augustus

The settlement of 27 BC

• Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
• Eck, Werner. The Age of Augustus. Trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
• Augustus. Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Trans. and ed. Alison E. Cooley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Trans. Robert Graves, rev. James Rives. London: Penguin Classics, 2007.

Chapter II — Julio-Claudians and Flavians

14–96 AD

• Tacitus. The Annals. Trans. A.J. Woodman. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004.
• Levick, Barbara. Tiberius the Politician. London: Routledge, 1976.
• Levick, Barbara. Claudius. London: Batsford, 1990.
• Champlin, Edward. Nero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
• Levick, Barbara. Vespasian. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2017.

Chapter III — Five Good Emperors

96–180

• Bennett, Julian. Trajan: Optimus Princeps. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2001.
• Birley, Anthony R. Hadrian: The Restless Emperor. London: Routledge, 1997.
• Birley, Anthony R. Marcus Aurelius: A Biography. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
• Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Trans. Gregory Hays. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
• Pliny the Younger. Letters. Trans. Betty Radice. London: Penguin Classics, 1969.

Chapter IV — Crisis of the Third Century

235–284

• Drinkwater, John F. The Gallic Empire: Separatism and Continuity in the North-Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, A.D. 260–274. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1987.
• Watson, Alaric. Aurelian and the Third Century. London: Routledge, 1999.
• Hartmann, Udo. Das palmyrenische Teilreich. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001.

Chapter V — Diocletian and Constantine

284–337

• Williams, Stephen. Diocletian and the Roman Recovery. London: Routledge, 1985.
• Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
• Lenski, Noel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. The Life of Constantine. Trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Chapters VI–VII — The Western fall

337–476

• Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History. London: Macmillan, 2005.
• Ward-Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Fall of the West: The Slow Death of the Roman Superpower. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009.
• Brown, Peter. The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750. London: Thames & Hudson, 1971. The classic statement of the "transformation" view.
• Goffart, Walter. Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• MacMullen, Ramsay. Corruption and the Decline of Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Chapters VIII–IX — The Eastern Empire

527–1453

• Herrin, Judith. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2007.
• Kaldellis, Anthony. The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
• Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
• Procopius. The Wars of Justinian. Trans. H.B. Dewing, rev. Anthony Kaldellis. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014.
• Komnene, Anna. The Alexiad. Trans. E.R.A. Sewter, rev. Peter Frankopan. London: Penguin Classics, 2009.
• Crowley, Roger. Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453. London: Faber & Faber, 2005.

Chapter X — After Rome

1453 to today

• Strootman, Rolf, and Miguel John Versluys, eds. Persianism in Antiquity. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017. On Roman cultural debts to the Persianate east.
• Wickham, Chris. The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. London: Allen Lane, 2009.
• Stathakopoulos, Dionysios. A Short History of the Byzantine Empire. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.