Barry Strauss has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 11 ratings. The most-rated is Ten Caesars.
Ten Caesars
Summary
Best-selling classical historian Barry Strauss tells the story of three-and-a-half centuries of the Roman Empire through the lives of 10 of the most important emperors, from Augustus to Constantine. Barry Strauss’ Ten Caesars is the story of the Roman Empire from rise to reinvention, from Augustus, who founded the empire, to Constantine, who made it Christian and moved the capital east to Constantinople. During these centuries, Rome gained in splendor and territory, then lost both. The empire reached from modern-day Britain to Iraq, and gradually, emperors came not from the old families of the first century but from men born in the provinces, some of whom had never even seen Rome. By the fourth century, the time of Constantine, the Roman Empire had changed so dramatically in geography, ethnicity, religion, and culture that it would have been virtually unrecognizable to Augustus. In the imperial era, Roman women - mothers, wives, mistresses - had substantial influence over the emperors, and Strauss also profiles the most important among them, from Livia, Augustus’ wife, to Helena, Constantine’s mother. But even women in the imperial family faced limits, and the emperors often forced them to marry or divorce for purely political reasons. Rome’s legacy remains today in so many ways, from language, law, and architecture to the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. Strauss examines this enduring heritage through the lives of the men who shaped it: Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Diocletian, and Constantine. Over the ages, they learned to maintain the family business - the government of an empire - by adapting when necessary and always persevering no matter the cost. Ten Caesars is essential history as well as fascinating biography.
©2019 Barry Strauss (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
The Death of Caesar
Summary
William Shakespeare's gripping play showed Caesar's assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals' plot put together by Caesar's disaffected officers and designed with precision. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, but they had the help of a third man - Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar's entourage, one of Caesar's leading generals, and a lifelong friend. It was he, not Brutus, who truly betrayed Caesar. Caesar's assassins saw him as a military dictator who wanted to be king. He threatened a permanent change in the Roman way of life and in the power of senators. The assassins rallied support among the common people, but they underestimated Caesar's soldiers, who flooded Rome. The assassins were vanquished; their beloved Republic became the Roman Empire.
©2015 Barry Strauss (P)2015 Tantor
Masters of Command
Summary
Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar: Each was a master of war. Each had to look beyond the battlefield to decide whom to fight and why; to know what victory was and when to end the war; to determine how to bring stability to the lands he conquered. Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar had to be not only generals but statesmen. And yet each was a battlefield commander, a strategist, a leader of men - in short, a warrior. Tactics change, weapons change, but the ultimate purpose of war remains much the same through the centuries, and a great warrior must know how to measure success. Publishers Weekly said: "No one presents the military history of the ancient world with greater insight and panache than Barry Strauss," and in Masters of Command he shows what these three great commanders can teach us today about ambition, leadership, branding, and more. Understanding where Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar succeeded and failed can serve anyone who thinks strategically - whether in business or elsewhere - to analyze his or her actions. Masters of Command is a guidebook for the battlefield and the boardroom alike.
©2012 Barry Strauss (P)2012 Tantor
The Trojan War
Summary
The Trojan War is the most famous conflict in history, the subject of Homer's Iliad, one of the cornerstones of Western literature. Although many listeners know that this literary masterwork is based on actual events, there is disagreement about how much of Homer's tale is true. Drawing on recent archaeological research, historian and classicist Barry Strauss explains what really happened in Troy more than 3,000 years ago. For many years it was thought that Troy was an insignificant place that never had a chance against the Greek warriors who laid siege and overwhelmed the city. In the old view, the conflict was decided by duels between champions on the plain of Troy. Today we know that Troy was indeed a large and prosperous city, just as Homer said. The Trojans themselves were not Greeks but vassals of the powerful Hittite Empire to the east in modern-day Turkey, and they probably spoke a Hittite-related language called Luwian. The Trojan War was most likely the culmination of a long feud over power, wealth, and honor in western Turkey and the offshore islands. The war itself was mainly a low-intensity conflict, a series of raids on neighboring towns and lands.
©2006 Barry S. Strauss (P)2018 Tantor
The Spartacus War
Summary
The Spartacus War is the extraordinary story of the most famous slave rebellion in the ancient world, the fascinating true story behind a legend that has been the inspiration for novelists, filmmakers, and revolutionaries for 2,000 years. Starting with only 74 men, a gladiator named Spartacus incited a rebellion that threatened Rome itself. With his fellow gladiators, Spartacus built an army of 60,000 soldiers and controlled the southern Italian countryside. A charismatic leader, he used religion to win support. An ex-soldier in the Roman army, Spartacus excelled in combat. He defeated nine Roman armies and kept Rome at bay for two years before he was defeated. After his final battle, 6,000 of his followers were captured and crucified along Rome's main southern highway. The Spartacus War is the dramatic and factual account of one of history's great rebellions. Spartacus was beaten by a Roman general, Crassus, who had learned how to defeat an insurgency. But the rebels were partly to blame for their failure. Their army was large and often undisciplined; the many ethnic groups within it frequently quarreled over leadership. No single leader, not even Spartacus, could keep them all in line. And when faced with a choice between escaping to freedom and looting, the rebels chose wealth over liberty, risking an eventual confrontation with Rome's most powerful forces. The result of years of research, The Spartacus War is based not only on written documents but also on archaeological evidence, historical reconstruction, and the author's extensive travels in the Italian countryside that Spartacus once conquered.
©2009 Barry Strauss (P)2009 Audible, Inc.