By Edward J. Watts
Basic, 736 pages, $40
The Romans knew the precise date on which their civilization began: the 11th day before the Calends of May, or April 21 by our calendar. Ancient chronographers differed as to whether that founding took place in 753 B.C. or the following year, but the date's significance was clear: It marked the moment when Romulus, brother of Remus, made a furrow in the earth and defined the boundaries of the city he would soon rule.
In contrast to this precise starting point, Rome's terminus defies definition. It's clear the Romans progressed from the monarchy that Romulus founded to a republic -- the system that began with the overthrow of the kings in 509 B.C. -- and from there, in the 20s B.C., to the autocracy established by Augustus. The line of emperors ruling Rome comes to an end in A.D. 476 when a teenager bearing the names of two previous founders -- Romulus Augustus -- was deposed by non-Roman invaders. Historians often take that date as Rome's endpoint, if not a somewhat earlier "fall," in A.D. 410, when Rome was sacked and plundered by a Visigothic army.
Even as the Rome-based half of the empire was teetering, though, an eastern portion, centered on the city once known as Byzantium but later renamed by Emperor Constantine after himself, was only getting started. By the fourth century, Constantinople would become a second capital of the Roman Empire, complete with a second set of officials and, often, a second emperor. Today we dub this eastern state the Byzantine Empire, but those who inhabited it referred to themselves as Romaioi, or Romans, and called their primary language Romeika, rather than Greek. As late as the 13th century, Jalal al-Din, a Persian poet, came to be called Rumi -- the Roman -- because of his links to the Byzantine world.
With his title "The Romans," Edward Watts signals his determination to take the Byzantines at their word and consider them part of the Roman story that began with Romulus. This maximalist definition of Rome results in a sweeping historical survey that spans two millennia, beginning around 800 B.C. and ending in A.D. 1204, when crusader armies, instead of invading the Holy Land, sacked Constantinople. The Byzantine empire endured for some 250 years more, but Mr. Watts maintains that because the crusaders "imposed their own, foreign ways of doing things" they severed the link between eastern "Romans" and Rome itself, a link that would never be restored.
The task Mr. Watts has set himself would be hard enough if the stories of the two Romes, east and west, ran consecutively. In fact they overlap and intertwine for centuries; "The Romans" follows the two in tandem. Mr. Watts extends this overlap by taking the western narrative up to the death of Charlemagne (A.D. 814). In the eyes of most historians, Europe by then had long since entered the Middle Ages, but again Mr. Watts takes the self-definition of his subjects as a guidepost. Charlemagne had, after all, been crowned Emperor of the Romans, as though the imperial line going back to Augustus had simply been paused, not ended, in 476.
"The Romans" is, in this sense, an apt title, but in another way it misleads. One might deduce from it that the book's main concern is with the Roman people, the populus in Senatus Populusque Romanus ("the Senate and the People of Rome"), rather than with those who ruled them. But in contrast to some recent bottom-up treatments of ancient history, Mr. Watts's approach is distinctly top-down, with a reigning sovereign nearly always at center stage. Rarely does he venture outside the halls of power to give a sense of broader movements; readers seeking insight into cultural trends, such as achievements in the arts and in literature, will find scant mention here.
Those intrigued by the ebb and flow of political power, however, will find in this book a cornucopia. Hundreds of leaders are profiled in its pages, if one counts kings, consuls, generals, warlords, dictators, emperors, regents, pretenders, usurpers and barbarian chieftains ruling through Roman puppets. The tally increases dramatically during the so-called Crisis of the Third Century, a 50-year span beginning in A.D. 235 during which more than two dozen men claimed executive power; and in the Tetrarchy, three decades beginning in 293 when Rome had four imperial figures at any one time.
Especially during these unstable eras, the long train of rulers forms a dizzying cavalcade. Like Homer cataloging the deaths of heroes at Troy, Mr. Watts puts nearly all of these rulers on record, supplying poignant details for even minor figures. The unfortunate Jovian, for instance, became emperor in A.D. 363 during a military campaign in what is now Iraq after the reigning emperor, Julian -- known as Julian the Apostate for his attempt to reinstitute pagan worship -- was killed in battle there. Jovian and his army continued to make their way toward Constantinople, but the young emperor never arrived. He died en route in a small Anatolian town "whose overzealous residents accidentally poisoned him when, just before he arrived, they freshly painted a well-insulated building for him to stay in." His reign lasted nearly eight months.
With so much ground and so many rulers to cover, Mr. Watts pauses only occasionally to offer reflections or insights. His prose drives forward with the resolve of a legionnaire on a forced march. The ceaseless cycle of rises and falls tends to weary the reader, and the sober Mr. Watts seldom varies the tone or enlivens the narrative with his own responses. After describing cruel and whimsical laws enacted by the mad Caligula, Mr. Watts says flatly: "When people began protesting that these measures were unfair, Caligula commanded soldiers to kill them."
The through line Mr. Watts follows is posed in his opening paragraph: "How did the Roman state survive for nearly 2,000 years?" His answer seems designed to address today's headlines. Rome "was a society whose greatest strength came from its robust political, social, religious, and economic institutions." he writes. "Rome's most important lesson to us is that no one, in any society, should ever want their own Sulla or Augustus or Justinian to blow up the systems of the past." Yet "The Romans" has focused on these towering individuals and, at least in the case of the last two, shows how their exercise of sole power added to Rome's vitality and longevity. It's an odd destination to reach after a journey of 2,000 years, but Mr. Watts treats us along the way to many intriguing sketches and to the ageless theme, in Shakespeare's words, of "sad stories of the death of kings."
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Mr. Romm, a professor of classics at Bard College, is the author of "Demosthenes: Democracy's Defender."” [1]
1. REVIEW --- Books: Empire of Centuries. Romm, James. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Oct 2025: C11.
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