Series list: Ancient Egypt: David O'Connor, NYU (2005) Ancient Near East: Marc Van De Mieroop, Columbia (2003) Persian Empire: Christopher Tuplin, Liverpool (2005) Archaic Greek World: Jonathan Hall, U of Chicago (2004) Classical Greek World: Peter Rhodes, Durham (2005) Hellenistic World: Malcolm Errington, Marburg (2007) Roman Republic: John Rich, Nottingham (proposed here) Roman Empire: Michael Peachin, NYU (2006) Late Antiquity: Stephen Mitchell, Exeter (2005) Byzantium: Tim Gregory, Ohio State (2003) Main blurb: This proposal is for a textbook with a very ambitious scope: a survey of the whole of Roman history down to the fall of the Republic, which, while concise and economically written, would nonetheless be detailed enough to serve as the foundation for serious study. No recent work of this scope exists in English, and most detailed textbooks on the Republic deal only with a selected period (thus both the Routledge and Fontana series allocate two volumes to the Republic, with Routledge making the break at 264 BC and Fontana, oddly, at the early point of 390 BC). There is, however, a powerful case (both intellectual and, I think, commercial) to be made for covering the whole period in a single volume. The intellectual case is that the major themes such as warfare and expansion and internal political development continue to evolve over the whole period and cannot be fully understood unless it is considered as a whole. The commercial case is that most courses cover the whole period, so that the books with an early cut-off point or late starting point tend to leave many courses not fully catered for. The proposed book will provide a straightforward and up-to-date narrative of events, in keeping with the specification for the Blackwell series: this is a need which the currently available competitors conspicuously fail to meet. The two central themes will be internal politics (the evolution of the Republic's institutions, political conflict, the Republic's collapse) and warfare and imperial expansion, and the interrelationship of these two themes will be brought out throughout. However, account will be taken of other developments, in society, economy and culture.

A narrative of events alone cannot do full justice to this material, and so a number of thematic chapters are worked into the scheme of contents (especially chs 12-14, 24-27).