In the bloodied mountains of Pannonia, the Roman army struggles to put down a brutal rebellion. Corvus is now the standard bearer of the Eighth Legion, which has borne the brunt of the fighting. The famed soldier has lost one comrade after another, and now his oldest friend, Marcus, has betrayed him, shaking him to […]
Review: Nero: the man behind the myth
We’ve had more than a year without major exhibitions to visit. But the British Museum has returned with one of its blockbusters: a treasure-filled and challenging exploration of the Emperor Nero. Best-selling author Simon (SJA) Turney, who knows a thing or two about the Roman Empire, reviews it for Historia and finds it one of […]
Masters of Rome by Simon Turney and Gordon Doherty
As competition for the imperial throne intensifies, Constantine and Maxentius realise their childhood friendship cannot last. Each man struggles to control their respective quadrant of empire, battered by currents of politics, religion and personal tragedy, threatened by barbarian forces and enemies within. With their positions becoming at once stronger and more troubled, the strained threads […]
Legion by Geraint Jones
AD6: The greatest army assembled in a generation prepares to march. But not Legionary Corvus. He and half his legion are to be left behind to garrison the province of Pannonia: a wild place where the mountains are as deadly as any foe. Corvus despairs as he watches his closest friend Marcus march to war, […]
Masters of Rome by Simon Turney and Gordon Doherty
As competition for the imperial throne intensifies, Constantine and Maxentius realise their childhood friendship cannot last. Each man struggles to control their respective quadrant of empire, battered by currents of politics, religion and personal tragedy, threatened by barbarian forces and enemies within. With their positions becoming at once stronger and more troubled, the strained threads […]
Sons of Rome by Simon Turney and Gordon Doherty
As twilight descends on the third century AD, the Roman Empire is but a shadow of its former self. Decades of usurping emperors, splinter kingdoms and savage wars have left the people beleaguered, the armies weary and the future uncertain. And into this chaos Emperor Diocletian steps, reforming the succession to allow for not one […]
A game of gods: religion in a changing Roman world
The Romans threw Christians to the lions; then Constantine I converted to Christianity and everything was fine. Right? Of course it was far more complicated than that, as Simon Turney and Gordon Doherty show in Sons of Rome, their new novel which follows the rise of Constantine and his rival Maxentius. They tell Historia about […]
Why the Roman Empire grew so big
They came, they saw, and they kept on conquering. Why did the Romans expand their empire so dramatically? And who benefitted most from Roman imperialism? These are questions Harry Sidebottom needed to confront while writing his latest novel, The Return, he tells Historia. In the last two and a half centuries BCE Rome expanded from […]