It was a time of revolution. The Roman Revolution describes the little known “crisis of the third century”, and how it led to a revolutionary new Roman Empire. Long before the more famous collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, in the years between AD 235-275, barbarian invasions, civil war and plague devastated ancient Rome. Out of this ordeal came new leaders, new government, new armies and a new vision of what it was to be Roman. Best remembered today is the rapid rise of Christianity in this period, as Rome’s pagan gods were rejected, and the emperor Constantine converted to this new religion. Less well remembered is the plethora of other changes that conspired to provide an environment well suited to a religious revolution.

Drawing on the latest research, Nick Holmes looks for new answers to old questions. He charts the rise of the Roman Republic and the classical Roman Empire, examining the roles played by sheer good luck and the benign climate. For example, he emphasises the unexpected death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent weakness of the Greek successor states as the ideal political environment for Rome’s expansion. But Rome’s good fortune did not last. The rise of Sasanian Persia, the growing strength of the German barbarians, and the brutal effects of the Antonine plague caused the near collapse of the Roman Empire in the third century. Focusing on the reigns of the critically important but under-researched emperors in the third century, such as Aurelian, Diocletian and Constantine, he vividly brings to life how Rome just escaped catastrophe in the third century, and embarked on a journey that would take it into a brave new world – one which provided the foundations for modern Europe and America.

This book is the first of a multi-volume series that will chart the full course of the Fall of the Roman Empire from the third century AD to the seventh. The second book, The Fall of Rome, continues the story of Rome’s decline up to the sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth in AD 410. The third book, Rome and Attila, covers the period from AD 410 to the western empire’s final demise in AD 476. Further books will look at the Roman reconquest of Italy and North Africa under the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, followed by the rise of Islam and the demise of the Eastern Roman Empire in the seventh century.