The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume Two (A.D. 395 to A.D. 641)
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume Two (A.D. 395 to A.D. 641)
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Narrated by:
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Charlton Griffin
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By:
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Edward Gibbon
About this listen
Volume Two begins with the accession of the Roman Emperor Valens in the year 364, a period which heralded vast movements of barbarian tribes from the north and east. The Huns move from the confines of Mongolia westward into Europe, pushing the German tribes in terror before them, who in turn move across the Rhine and Danube into Roman territory. The names of Goths, Franks, Lombards and Vandals will become part of the daily vocabulary.
Gibbon describes in matchless style the dramatic events as the Western Roman Empire disintegrates under the pressure of Germanic invasion and internal corruption. The Roman Empire had become a bloated, bureaucratic nightmare of tyrannical rulers, cruel magistrates, and pitiless tax collectors even before the arrival of the Germans. Roman citizens often welcomed the barbarians as a less odious master.
And as they turn to Christianity for hope, even the new faith is riven by various factions. Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire continues to prosper in the face of constant challenges from the Persians, who are finally repulsed by the Emperor Heraclius…only to witness in the year 630 the rise of a new threat: Islam. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire will conclude in Volume Three.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 105
The Goths are the most enigmatic of all the ancient German tribes. Their name today is still widely in use for a variety of cultural and artistic movements. But unlike other famous German tribes whose names are still descriptive of nations they founded - the Franks, the Lombards, the Angles, the Saxons and the Alemanni - the Goths simply disappeared. The subject of Henry Bradley's splendid short history is tracing the rise, the migrations, and the impact of the Goths on European history along with their spectacular fall.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting Book about a little understood people
- By Mark on 07-29-15
By: Henry Bradley
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Constantine and the Conversion of Europe
- By: Arnold Jones
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4 out of 5 stars 57
By the end of Diocletian's reign in the opening years of the fourth century, the pagan world had collapsed into the arms of a multicultural religious movement which had spread from the eastern Mediterranean. These were the "mystery religions" which had been in competition with one another for a century. By the time of Constantine, they had spread everywhere within the empire. But one of these religions, Christianity, was chosen by the young emperor.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Lot of Potentially Boring Detail
- By Christopher on 07-08-10
By: Arnold Jones
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History of the Conquest of Mexico
- By: W.H. Prescott
- Narrated by: Kerry Shale
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 158
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
In 1519, Hernando Cortés arrived in Mexico to investigate stories of a wealthy empire. What he encountered was beyond his wildest dreams; an advanced civilization with complex artistic, political, and religious systems (involving extensive human sacrifice) and replete with gold. This was the Aztec empire, headed by the aloof emperor, Montezuma.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gripping story
- By Roger Conner on 11-05-04
By: W.H. Prescott
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Lives of the Twelve Caesars
- By: Suetonius
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Translation doubts
- By Elizabeth on 05-20-07
By: Suetonius
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Common Sense
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Adrian Cronauer
- Length: 1 hr and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 223
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
This pamphlet, first published in 1776, set in print the word every American was thinking about, but none dared say: independence! It was published anonymously in New York, selling 120,000 copies in the first 3 months and half a million in that same year. Its author, Thomas Paine, wrote in a language that could be understood by any reasonably literate colonist. But more important than it being so well received, is that it captured the American colonists' imaginations and was a primary catalyst to the independence movement in the United States. Noted American historian Bernard Bailyn called it "the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant ever written in the English language."
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4 out of 5 stars
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revolutionary ideas for sure
- By reggie p on 08-20-03
By: Thomas Paine
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Politics
- By: Aristotle
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 131
Aristotle's Politics is a work of political philosophy. The end of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the philosophy of human affairs. Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Aristotle Lives Again!
- By Jeff on 02-25-15
By: Aristotle
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Our Oriental Heritage
- The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,312
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,161
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By Michael on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
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The Prince
- By: Nicolo Machiavelli
- Narrated by: Joseph Gomez
- Length: 3 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 20
The Prince is a 16th-century political treatise by the Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513, after he was forced to leave Florence as a political exile. Dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the work is Machiavelli’s advice to the ruler of Florence on how to stay in power.
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The Assassination of Julius Caesar
- A People's History of Ancient Rome
- By: Michael Parenti
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story5 out of 5 stars 80
Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility - the one percent of the population who controlled 99 percent of the empire's wealth. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti recounts this period, spanning the years 100 to 33 BC, from the perspective of the Roman people. In doing so, he presents a provocative, trenchantly researched narrative of popular resistance against a powerful elite.
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5 out of 5 stars
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another side to Roman history
- By Darksnovia on 04-16-22
By: Michael Parenti
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The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages
- By: Ferdinand Lot
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Ferdinand Lot (1866-1952) was one of the great historians of his generation, and the transition from Roman to Medieval civilization was a process that fascinated him most of his life. Rather than placing the emphasis for Rome’s fall on purely political or military reasons, Lot put forth multiple explanations for the birth of the Middle Ages which embrace not only politics and war, but linguistic, geographic, cultural, social and economic factors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Rome "too vast, too complicated and too cunning"
- By Philo on 11-26-15
By: Ferdinand Lot
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Machiavelli
- Philosopher of Power
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Tim Reynolds
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
Part of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Machiavelli is a superb portrait of the brilliant and revolutionary political philosopher - history's most famous theorist of "warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed" - and the age he embodied. Ross King, the New York Times best-selling author of Brunelleschi's Dome, argues that the author of The Prince was a far more complex and sympathetic character than is often portrayed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awesome
- By Crisitna Tunon on 07-16-21
By: Ross King
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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
- By: Charles MacKay
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4 out of 5 stars 102
Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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People don't change
- By J. on 07-05-16
By: Charles MacKay
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The Age of Caesar
- Five Roman Lives
- By: Plutarch, James Romm - preface and notes, Pamela Mensch - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names resonate across thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended the Roman republic, their lives still haunt us as examples of how the hunger for personal power can overwhelm collective politics, how the exaltation of the military can corrode civilian authority, and how the best intentions can lead to disastrous consequences. Plutarch renders these history-making lives as flesh-and-blood characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Terrific
- By Michael on 06-13-23
By: Plutarch, and others
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Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
- By: Plutarch
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 83 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 277
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 252
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Story5 out of 5 stars 252
Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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For the Very Dedicated
- By John Pinkerton on 03-13-18
By: Plutarch
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The New World
- A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume II
- By: Sir Winston Churchill
- Narrated by: Christian Rodska
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 743
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 533
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 534
Between 1485 and 1688, England became a Protestant country under Henry VIII. His daughter, Elizabeth I, battled for succession and supremacy at home, and the discovery of 'the round world' enabled a vast continent across the Atlantic to be explored. While this new era was spawning the beginnings of modern America, England was engaged in a bloody civil war and sustained a Republican experiment under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Churchill series
- By Elizabeth Weingarten on 08-27-08
What listeners say about The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume Two (A.D. 395 to A.D. 641)
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- David J. Rosenbrock
- 04-18-15
Loved it.
I enjoyed the details of the characters in this book. The narrator is exceptional. I recommend this book to those seriously interested in this historic drama.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- mardi
- 11-19-15
Is not displaying a cover design.
Book download does not show an art cover design, although it does display it when I play the book. In all other areas, very good!
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