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I started listening to podcasts at just the right time: There was a minor explosion of good historical subjects going on. This was largely due to Mike Duncan, and his History of Rome podcast. Not that you can tell by listening to the very early episodes; it took a while for his delivery to loosen up and become a very good podcast.

But it did become a very good podcast, and so is his later Revolutions podcast. So, I’m a little embarrassed that it’s taken me seven years to read his first book, especially since its a look at a period of Roman history that needs more attention.

And hey, Mike Duncan agrees with me, it’s why he wrote this particular book. This is a popular history book, and even less dense than most of those. It’s not particularly long, coming in at 265 pages in hardcover.

But, then there’s extensive endnotes, and a lengthy index. While this is geared to someone just taking an interest in history, all the tools to dig deeper are provided. In fact, the endnotes are particularly geared at getting you to the relevant primary sources. This is great place to begin if you want to develop an interest in the period. (One entry in the index, “murders”, then references eleven people killed in his narrative, and then cross-references to “killings, political”, with another seven sub-entries.)

And I should mention that period covers from the first real crisis of the Republic, the rise of the Gracchi brothers, and gives some nice background to the social forces at play at the time. From there, Duncan goes on to events in Africa and Spain, with Jugurtha rising to power, and the troubles in Spain leading to the siege of Numantia, and then to Marius and Sulla, whose attempt to rework the Republic into something more stable concludes the book (along with Duncan’s thoughts on why it didn’t work). So, for those of you used to McCullough’s Master of Rome series, the first half of this is before the series, and covers everything she talks about from before the first book, through the first three books of the series.

Duncan’s prose is very readable, the contents very informative, and overall he takes as neutral a stance as possible on what unfolds in his pages. Even if you’ve read up on Roman history, 146–78 BC is a period you may know much about, and this is a very good starter book on the period.

Ian Hughes’ books on the period where the Western Empire dissolved into nothingness have been very good at providing a clearer picture of the process. I think this volume might be the best one of the lot.

Like his earlier book on Stilicho, this traces the career of one man, who many with the barest of knowledge of the period will know of because of his commanding the Roman side at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains against Attila the Hun.

The early section looks at Aetius’ early life, and positions him as part of the Roman upper class. He was traded to the Huns as a ‘hostage’ during his teenage years; Hughes is at pains to talk about the actual nature of hostages as political insurance in the pre-modern world, something that needs looking at more often. At any rate, this part informs a large part of his thesis. The Roman military had become very conservative with manpower and emphasized sieges and the like to set-piece battles. The Huns and other tribal confederations still emphasized combat and set-piece battles of various sizes, and Aetius’ career shows the same pattern, so Hughes assumes that much of his military training and style comes from his period with the Huns.

Aetius also relies on support from Hunnic factions, particularly early in his career. Hughes also figures this comes from friendships formed in his time with them. This is important during some early maneuverings, which could easily have ended up with Aetius dead as a rebel, but after stong-arming the other faction, ended with him working quite effectively inside and with the system for the next two decades.

It can reasonably be said that his use of Hunnic troops during his internal fight against Boniface was part of the downfall of the Western Empire. Hughes doesn’t go too much into that, but does spend a good amount of time and thought on various settlements of barbarians inside the empire. This too he sees as not necessarily destructive of the Empire as it had successfully been done before. In his concluding part though, he talks about the various methods by which this was done, and points out that the Goths in southern Gaul had been allowed to settle with their leadership intact, instead of it being sent elsewhere, generally as leadership in a different section of the army. This put people used to politics and power with a built-in power base inside the Empire, and that is what Hughes points to as the dramatic step towards the dissolution of the western Empire.

Often what is known of Aetius comes straight out of Gregory of Tours, and Hughes does a good job here pulling together the sources, and giving the outline of his character. I think Hughes may have trended towards being too sympathetic to him, but his conclusions are reasonable.