Anthony Everitt Livres

This study of participation in music looks at the growing movement to bridge the divide between those who make music their career and the public at large. It identifies examples of good practice and describes the challenges ahead.

He found Rome made of clay and left it made of marble. As Rome's first emperor, Augustus transformed the unruly Republic into the greatest empire the world had ever seen. His consolidation and expansion of Roman power two thousand years ago laid the foundations for all of Western history to follow. Yet despite Augustus's accomplishments, very few biographers have concentrated on the man himself, instead choosing to chronicle the age in which he lived. In this study of power and political genius, biographer Everitt gives an intimate account of his illustrious subject. He takes some of the household names of history--Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Antony, Cleopatra--and turns them into flesh and blood. At a time when many consider America an empire, this portrait of the greatest emperor who ever lived makes for enlightening reading.--From publisher description

"This is the biography of a brilliant orator and writer, and a politician who twice held the reins of power." "Cicero's speeches and ideas have influenced European civilized values for two thousand years. Personally, he is accessible to us in his hundreds of letters, many of them to his dear friend Atticus. We can follow his busy life as a lawyer and politician, and the historic events in which he took part, from day to day (sometimes from hour to hour) as he nervously prepares a speech to deliver in the Forum or to the Senate, detects the supposedly incorruptible Brutus in a financial scam, puts a stop to a sexual escapade of the young Mark Antony, steadies Rome at a moment of acute vulnerability following Julius Caesar's assassination, vainly tries to prevent civil war ... or at more private moments, as he entertains dinner parties with his wit or irons out a problem with his wayward nephew." "In this account of Cicero's career, from his provincial origins to his tragic end, as the Republican cause he revered crashed round his ears, Anthony Everitt makes full use of Cicero's own words and those of his contemporaries."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A moreishly entertaining and richly informative miscellany of facts about Rome and the Roman world.

The story of the modest city-state that would become the birthplace of democracy

An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. Everitt judges Alexander's life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions.

Acclaimed author Anthony Everitt, whose Augustus was praised by the Philadelphia Inquirer as a narrative of sustained drama and skillful analysis, is the rare writer whose work both informs and enthralls. In Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome-the first major account of the emperor in nearly a century-Everitt presents a compelling, richly researched biography of the man whom he calls arguably the most successful of Rome's rulers. Born in A.D. 76, Hadrian lived through and ruled during a tempestuous era, a time when the Colosseum was opened to the public and Pompeii was buried under a mountain of lava and ash. Everitt vividly recounts Hadrian's thrilling life, in which the emperor brings a century of disorder and costly warfare to a peaceful conclusion while demonstrating how a monarchy can be compatible with good governance. Hadrian was brave and astute-despite his sometimes prickly demeanor-as well as an accomplished huntsman, poet, and student of philosophy. What distinguished Hadrian's rule, according to Everitt, were two insights that inevitably ensured the empire's long and prosperous future: He ended Rome's territorial expansion, which had become strategically and economically untenable, by fortifying her boundaries (the many famed Walls of Hadrian), and he effectively Hellenized Rome by anointing Athens the empire's cultural center, thereby making Greek learning and art vastly more prominent in Roman life. With unprecedented detail, Everitt illuminates Hadrian's private life, including his marriage to Sabina-a loveless, frequently unhappy bond that bore no heirs-and his enduring yet doomed relationship with the true love of his life, Antinous, a beautiful young Bithynian man. Everitt also covers Hadrian's war against the Jews, which planted the seeds of present-day discord in the Middle East. Despite his tremendous legacy-including a virtual marble biography of still-standing structures-Hadrian is considered one of Rome's more enigmatic emperors. But making splendid use of recently discovered archaeological materials and his own exhaustive research, Everitt sheds new light on one of the most important figures of the ancient world

Rome's decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but the story of how the empire was won is every bit as compelling. Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., Rome grew to become the ancient world's preeminent power. Historian Anthony Everitt fashions the story of Rome's rise to glory into an erudite page-turner filled with lessons for our time. He paints indelible portraits of the great Romans--and non-Romans--who left their mark on the Roman world. He chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome's shrewd strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire. And he outlines the corrosion of constitutional norms that accompanied Rome's imperial expansion, as old habits of political compromise gave way, leading to violence and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome was left triumphant everywhere except within its own borders.--From publisher description

"The Roman emperor Nero has long been the very image of a bad ruler--cruel, vain, and incompetent. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. He supposedly set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. Afterward he cleared the charred ruins of the city center and, in their place, built a vast palace. Historians of his day despised him, and it's their recollections that have been passed down through the ages. But, in all of the horror, there is a mystery. For a long time after his deposition and suicide, anonymous hands laid flowers on his grave. The monster was loved. In this nuanced biography, Anthony Everitt, the celebrated biographer of classical Greece and Rome, reveals the contradictions inherent in the reign of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus and offers a reappraisal of his life. Everitt also brings ancient Rome to life, showing the crowded streets that made the city prone to fires, political intrigues that could turn deadly in an instant, and vast building projects that continuously remade the Roman landscape. In this teeming and politically unstable world, Nero did terrible things, but the larger empire was also well managed under his rule. He presided over a diplomatic triumph with the rival Parthian empire, and Everitt teams up with investigative journalist Roddy Ashworth to tell the epic story of Rome's conquest of Britain and British queen Boudica's doomed revolt against Nero's legions. Nero was also a champion of arts and culture whose own great love was music, and he won the loyalty of the lower classes with great spectacles. In many ways he was ahead of his time, particularly in the way he looked to Greece and the eastern half of the empire as crucial to Rome's future. Nero had a vision for Rome, but, wracked by insecurity and guilt-ridden over assassinations he ordered, perhaps he never really had the stomach to rule it"-- Provided by publisher

A portrait of the Roman politician describes the life and times of the ancient statesman, based on the witty and candid letters that Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus in which he described the events and personalities that shaped the final days of Republican Rome