Understanding Rome

I'm a firm believer that in 2018 you can educate yourself to be an amateur expert on anything. This year I want to spend my free time becoming knowledgeable about the Roman Empire, from pre-Republic all the way to the fall of Byzantium. I'm looking for the help of Veeky Forums to decide what books I read to teach me about everything Rome related. I want to read The History of the Decline and Fall... but don't know how early or late in my reading list I should put that.

What are great and/or essential books I need to get my hands on to learn about the Roman Empire's best and worst moments through time?

Instead of looking at this at a masturbatory exercise in autodidactism, why not read an overview of the empire and focus on which aspects you enjoy most?

livy, strabo

as a followup comment, listen to the history of rome by mike duncan podcast

So just go to Wikipedia and call it a day? How about, no, Scott?
I've heard of Livy before but don't really know him. Enlighten me?
Follow up comment: Plutarch's (I forget the name) Lives is already on my radar

Is it on YouTube or whatever? I'll look into the podcast, thanks

Yes fuckface. Use the search bar.

livy tried to write a history of rome leading up to his age (books from the foundation of the city/ab urbe condita libri), but we've only about a quarter of the original left. it's where romulus and remus and other myths about rome come from.
plutarch edits history to fit with moralizing. he says that in the opening but keep it in mind. him and strabo are the greek culture but roman state advocates you'll need most to understand patrician/pleb divides.

>we've only about a quarter left
:( it's kind of cool to think about his works that have made it have survived thousands of years though.
So I'm getting a list going. For now I guess it's authors I need to look at:
1.) Livy
2.) Strabo
3.) Plutarch
4.) Gibbon
5.) ?

I've read some Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (he might've been Greek though) when I got into stoicism, but not a whole lot. Are there any other works by Roman emperors/statesmen I should add to the list? Any other philosophers?

Fwiw I have read Virgil's Aneid too

You can read Caesers account of his conquest of gaul, written by himself.

the one's you've read, you've probably read through arrian and antonius. if you haven't picked up arrian, add him, though he's more about the greeks than the romans, he's good for understanding other places and history as the romans understood them (a lot of his shit is directly addressed to hadrian).

I just started this recently and it's dope.

Holy shit that's gonna be read number two. Should I read and learn in historical order? Or would it be okay to skip around?
I don't know who arian and atonius are.

arrian is the source for most epictetus. antonius is a contemporary of seneca

Oh ok. I'd like to read more about Seneca specifically, but other Roman philosophers are cool too. But that's secondary to actual history.

How long does it take to read Livy? My edition has about 1200 pages of small print text. It's probably gonna take me ages to wade through but I'm so uneducated regarding Roman history. Secondary literature accounts don't seem to stick to my mind very well.

Is it a particular work by Livy? What do you mean by 1200 pages?

>amateur expert
You mean a dilettante? Fag

incredible, he can use synonyms
what other powers does he possess

Fuck me for trying to simply get across my point amirite

So you admit OP wants to be a faggot?
Yeah literally go fuck yourself you piece of garbage

>being this mad
take it easy user
dying from an anurism because some user asked you something is quite humiliating

What's wrong? Can't handle being called names? Fucking crybaby

>The Beginnings of Rome: Italy from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars, Ca 1,000-264 BC
>The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire
>Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
>The Storm Before the Storm
>Rubicon
>Everything written by Caesar
>The Roman Revolution
>The Ancient Economy
>In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire
>The Enemies of Rome: From Hannibal to Attila the Hun
>A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium
>>The Cambridge Ancient History, starting from Vol 7, part 2.
These thre/four tell of the fall from different perspectives.
>The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
>>The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
>>>How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower
>>>>The Ruin of the Roman Empire
>The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
>The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000
>Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

Then you can read biographies.
Like
>Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
>Caesar: Life of a Colossus
>Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor, or, Augustus: First Emperor of Rome
>Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome
>Hadrian's Memoirs
>The Last Pagan
>any book about anyone

im not even that user you muppet

So fucking what, bozo? Go fetch me my slippers, peon, you don't deserve to speak in my presence. Go eat your own fried was told and fuck your rectal wound with a rusty chainsaw

Holy shit you are my Ceasar

Oh hey follow up comment: should I learn everything in chronological order?

For you or anyone: how would I go about learning Roman law? Afaik, the romans were self aware their greatest strength wasn't arts or crafts but in creating good government. Any start place to learn exactly how they ruled?

A friend stole my early history of Rome :/ he's my friend no more.

Should read some of the ancient historians, especially Tacitus, Tacitus is great.
I put the "list" somewhat in a chronological order, I doubt it really matters.
If you really wish to be an amateur expert: read; "Cambridge Ancient History", before anything else. It's free and legal on Archive.org. This alone should take you all year.

But, you should also read Cicero (everyone should read Cicero), and "The Ancient Economy" covers much of that. Any serious history book covers all aspects of a period; law/peoples/culture/politics/wars.

>Trade and Politics in the Ancient World
Moses Finley writers more about Greece than Rome.
But Rome was based on "Greece" anyway.

Would it be silly to make it a personal life goal to learn Latin well enough to read some of these historians' works in their original Latin?