A Profile of Ancient Rome

To try and encompass the whole of ancient Roman history, culture and social life from its foundation to the fall of the Empire (and beyond) in a single well‐illustrated volume of just over 200 pages seems almost an act of hubris. This proves, however, to be a generally successful attempt at such an ambitious task: it is certainly a volume of very striking appearance, full of colour reproductions of Roman artifacts and art. It goes without saying that massive generalisation is the order of the day and that detail is, to say the least, selective (and often visual rather than...