As a beginning introduction that covers virtually the entire history of Rome (approximately 500 BC to 325 AD), Caesar and Christ is top notch. Durant's writing style is fluid and enjoyable and he has an affection for his subject that's evident on nearly every page. Thus, despite the rather detailed recitation of names, dates, and places, it's a quick and easy read and a good introduction to the subject.

I've always been a bit vague about Roman history, but no longer. I now know that the Republic lasted until about 150 BC, followed by a hundred years of civil war (civil war in Rome? I didn't know that....) and Caesar's ultimate victory in 45 BC. Durant depicts Caesar as something of a Roman Abraham Lincoln: a brilliant but moody politician willing to forgive his enemies and subsume his natural desires for revenge in the cause of rebuilding the Roman state. Like Lincoln, he was assassinated within a year of ending his own civil war (with the defeat of Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus), but luckily for the Roman Empire he was succeeded by his adopted son Augustus, an equally brilliant politician and a gifted administrator who architected the foundation of an empire that lasted, in its Eastern form at least, until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. One wonders what American history would have been like if Lincoln had been succeeded by someone as gifted as Augustus rather than the hapless Andrew Johnson.

Caesar's death had the effect of keeping the civil wars going a bit longer, and it took Augustus 15 years to finally defeat Marc Antony at Actium. It was Rome's last serious war for 200 years and Augustus ruled for 45 more years after his victory, carefully deferring to the Roman Senate in public but in reality gathering more and more power to himself as the Senate slowly abdicated its responsibilities, glad to give them up to someone else.

Caesar and Christ is heavy on literature and philosophy, perhaps more so than they deserve, and light on technology and politics. The rest of the empire outside the city of Rome is mostly ignored in this volume, and as if to make up for this slight Durant inserts a long section called "The Empire" toward the end of the book that's a bit of a catchall for everything other than the city itself. It's poorly done and uninteresting, and it's a pity that the material isn't integrated more gracefully throughout the text.

The most famous question about Rome, of course, is why it fell. Durant doesn't even try to answer this, but he does point out, quoting J. S. Reid, that the more interesting question really is, why did Rome rise? It's a good question. There doesn't really appear to have been anything special about Rome, and in fact it's likely that with a bit less luck Rome would have been wiped off the face of the map during the Second Punic War when Hannibal annihilated virtually the entire Roman army at Cannae (216 BC). Inexplicably, though, the city fathers of Carthage were unwilling to send reinforcements to Hannibal (a decision that would have been worth a more substantial discussion in this book--what were they thinking, after all?) and eventually, a dozen years later, unable to take Rome itself with his small force, he gave up and returned to Carthage. This was apparently just the wakeup call that Rome needed, and it responded magnificently. A few years later Cato was ending every speech in the Senate with the words Ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem--"Besides, I think that Carthage must be destroyed"--and that was exactly what happened in the Third Punic War. In 146 BC Carthage was literally wiped off the face of the earth and the remaining soil plowed and sown with salt.

And yet that still doesn't explain Rome's rise. The Third Punic War was a great victory, but it was followed by 100 years of civil war that by all rights should also have destroyed Rome. That Caesar was able to save Rome and Augustus able to rebuild it must surely rank as one of the most remarkable feats in all history.

In context, therefore, Rome's fall seems almost inevitable. By 150 BC it was an entirely venal and corrupt society, ripe for destruction by some more vigorous competitor, and the unexplainable thing, really, is not that Rome eventually fell but how it managed to delay its fall by perhaps 400 years after it otherwise should have happened anyway.

Still, given that Rome was, by hook or by crook, master of the world by 100 AD, what were the proximate causes of its decline and fall? I dunno, but here are a few interesting tidbits to gnaw on:

• It doesn't seem likely that it was due to the decline in birthrates. There's no question that this was a serious problem for Rome, but it was already a serious problem by 100 BC. Rome's glory lasted for 300 more years.

• Economics seems to have played perhaps the most significant role. Rome fed herself on an ever increasing river of tribute from her conquered territories, and this was eventually bound to stop increasing. Given the limitations of the day it was probably impossible for the empire to expand much further than it actually did, since Roman manpower and technology wouldn't have allowed them to suppress their frequent and inevitable provincial revolts over a much larger area than they controlled at their peak (during Trajan's reign, around 117 AD).
  
  So, starting around 117 AD, the inflow of gold and goods began to flatten and eventually decrease. The Roman economy was unable to handle this and thus began the long slide that ended with Alaric's sack of Rome in 410.

• Another economic factor, disparity of wealth, also played a key role. As Rome matured, wealth became so strongly concentrated that, despite the empire's apparent prosperity, the working classes became ever more poverty stricken. The venality and corruption of the upper classes had become nearly intolerable by around 100 AD, and by 200 AD they had completely surrendered the moral authority that they once commanded. Loyalty to the state waned as it became clear that the state felt no corresponding loyalty to the majority of its citizens, and eventually the empire crumbled due to lack of support from the plebeians. After all, why support a state when it's clear that the rewards of toil and victory go solely to the rich?

A few other miscellaneous interesting items:

• Romans had three (or more) names: a praenomen, or first name, a nomen, or clan name, and a cognomen, or family name. Caesar's full name, for example, was Caius Julius Caesar. However, in classical days there were only about 15 first names for males, and these tended to be repeated confusingly in many generations of the same family. Thus Roman history is full of Catos, Scipios, and Caesars who are nearly impossible to distinguish. It's a good thing so few records have made it through the ages, or we'd have not just Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, but a plethora of "Cato the In-Betweens." What a mess.

• The Romans, in the days of the Republic (when this mattered), had a strict term limits law. Most offices had a term of one year and you couldn't run for the same office again for ten years (although you could run for other offices). Unfortunately, it's hard to draw any conclusions from this since there's not much evidence one way or the other about whether this helped or hurt Rome.

Overall, Caesar and Christ is recommended as a very readable primer on the history of Rome and the beginnings of Christianity. If it has a fault, it is Durant's belief that history is primarily made by great men, which causes him to spend a lot of time on people and very little time on the larger historical currents explainable by economics, geography, religion, and so forth. Since both are important, I would have preferred a more balanced treatment that provided better explanations of some of the underlying currents that formed the world of which Rome was a part.

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