Rome Killed Its Soldiers, Dug Sewers to Conquer World: Review

There’s an imbalance in our picture of the ancient Romans, those violent, pious people who built an empire around their fly-blown miasma of a hilly backwater and left their imprint on every aspect of modern life, from politics to language.

The end of the republic, the rise of the empire and, thanks to Edward Gibbon, the empire’s collapse get most of the attention. The creation of this mighty force of history (which persisted in some form until 1453) is often overlooked.