Buy new:
$21.84
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: Prime Deals, USA
$21.84
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Friday, May 10. Order within 13 hrs 48 mins
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
$$21.84 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$21.84
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon
Ships from
Amazon
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$19.98
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
Former library book. Book might show mild to moderate indications of prior usage on the cover/pages. It might include rare instances of annotations or underlining, if any exist at all. Former library book. Book might show mild to moderate indications of prior usage on the cover/pages. It might include rare instances of annotations or underlining, if any exist at all. See less
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 13 hrs 48 mins
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$21.84 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$21.84
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Peter Jones
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Veni, Vidi, Vici: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Romans But Were Afraid to Ask Paperback – May 1, 2016

by Peter Jones (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 329 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$21.84","priceAmount":21.84,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"21","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"84","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"BeE5PqIsBF%2BymX7jzVy52XPQhoCAjUJfHHcKRwyp6f4Uw79eZ3QVLCT1IUMkqAI%2BWNS4UXH066bVMQY0bCZY2fyMluCAlZ2c2jikR%2B2gdiMrXcxx%2FDrqtiEX7Qh3b4rAZG%2BsLW3s1yyE62uSaa%2FyMHXXuxfW0KnUvWi%2FIZhw1rNN1c%2F2wKDFVA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$19.98","priceAmount":19.98,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"19","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"98","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"BeE5PqIsBF%2BymX7jzVy52XPQhoCAjUJfIWnidrODXdIm%2FGRGFZwJb%2FhqUmNQw6ryiD%2FQv1TdA5nAcAji2vC1DquydgHn2sWPR0gxBVeoiJayMqns3%2FN6D5a%2F1dAqzDur6y5A4XqL4mi7PW8LBswRPD%2F9vU9ry5eb054Dfda%2BaSC1%2FKYXgu8N55T6K3no4rL%2F","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The Romans left a long-lasting legacy and their influence can still be seen all around us, from our calendar and coins to our language and laws, but how much do we really know about them? Help is at hand in the form of this bookwhich tells the remarkable, and often surprising, story of the Romans and the most enduring empire in history. Fusing a lively and entertaining narrative with rigorous research, Veni, Vidi, Vici breaks down each major period into a series of concise nuggets that provide a fascinating commentary on every aspect of the Roman world, from plebs to personalities, sauces to sexuality, games to gladiators, poets to punishments, mosaics to medicine, and Catullus to Christianity.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Atlantic Books
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    5 x 1.2 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1782393900
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1782393900
  8. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Frequently bought together

Veni, Vidi, Vici: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Romans But Were Afraid to Ask
$21.84
Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by Prime Deals, USA and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
+
Quid Pro Quo: What the Romans Really Gave the English Language
$18.82
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Memento Mori: What the Romans Can Tell Us About Old Age & Death
$11.62
Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by 50 Star Retail USA and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review


"Jones spans all 1,200 years of Roman history with seemingly unstoppable enthusiasm. . . .  Informative, casually erudite but engagingly unstuffy, he makes the classical world feel both beguiling and fresh. . . . The book is full of fascination."  —Sunday Times



"Jones has an eagle's high eye for the history of Rome from Aeneas to Augustine and a pigeon's ground-level eye for the graffiti scratcher of Pompeii."  —Times

About the Author

Peter Jones has written a regular column, "Ancient & Modern," in the Spectator for many years and is the author of various books on the Classics, including Latin Crosswords, Learn Latin, Reading Latin, and Reading Ovid.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atlantic Books; Main edition (May 1, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1782393900
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1782393900
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 1.2 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 329 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Peter Jones

Peter Jones

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Peter Jones was educated at Cambridge University and taught Classics at Cambridge and at Newcastle University, before retiring in 1997. He has written a regular column, 'Ancient & Modern', in the Spectator for many years.

He is the author of various books on the Classics, including the bestselling Learn Latin and Learn Ancient Greek, as well as Reading Virgil's: Aeneid I and II, Vote for Caesar, Veni, Vidi, Vici, Eureka! Quid Pro Quo, and Memento Mori.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
329 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Robin Wiesneth - KidLit Author and Illustrator
5.0 out of 5 stars Bite sized bits of ancient Roman history
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2023
Verified Purchase
This book was a fun and fast read. The book is a chronological history of the Roman empire but the micro-stories are self-contained and easy to follow. I read a few pages at a time but never got lost.
Helpful
 Report
Sydney reader
4.0 out of 5 stars Not your usual history
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2013
Verified Purchase
This book is very easy to read. It covers all the major events in the history of Rome, more or less in chronological order, but adds a lot more as well. The detours along the way include things like gladiators and the games, architecture, food, romance and the life of the slave. Never dull, it serves as a great introduction to Roman history. While Simon Baker's 'Ancient Rome' is the best introduction to the narrative history of Rome, this book fleshes out the social history. Read together, they give a comprehensive picture of the ancient civilisation to bring it alive in a very readable way.
9 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
R. Scott Pogue
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent history book
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2022
Verified Purchase
This is a history book that is for people who don’t want to read a long, dry, complex book on Roman History. Kind of a “working man’s “ Roman history book if you will.

Not to be confused with “Roman history for Dummies”, it’s much better.
The author writes in a way that makes it interesting, and easily followed.

Highly Recommend!
Helpful
 Report
Hank
4.0 out of 5 stars I am a Roman history buff for the last 50 ...
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2017
Verified Purchase
I am a Roman history buff for the last 50 +years.
Thought I had read everything about the Romans.
this book proved me wrong.
5 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Augie
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read!
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2015
Verified Purchase
A wonderful book which presents the facts (and stories) with a unique blend of humour. A thoroughly enjoyable read - I couldn't put it down till I finished it!
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Torben Bendix Sorensen
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2017
Verified Purchase
Totally awesome ... told very entertainingly ...
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Rob Hardy
5.0 out of 5 stars Fun with Ancient Roman History
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2014
They left the world stage almost two thousand years ago, but the ancient Romans left their marks all over the world and continue to do so. Our calendar, for instance, is theirs, and then there are the legal systems, vocabulary, architecture, and what is more, all those gladiator movies. If you didn’t get enough Roman history when you were in school, or even if you did and you want to be entertained by the vast subject, get _Veni, Vidi, Vici: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Romans but Were Afraid to Ask_ (Atlantic Books) by Peter Jones. He is an emeritus professor of the Classics at Cambridge University, but this fact-packed volume is informal and fun, the sort of history that even people who don’t like reading history can find enlightening. Jones’s chapters are basically chronological, from the myths of the foundation of Rome to those Huns who brought it down. Within each chapter are nuggets of a page or less on an important, trivial, but always interesting historical fact, told with enthusiasm and punning good humor.

The Roman system of religion was exceedingly strange. There was the usual pantheon of gods and goddesses ruled over by Jupiter, of course, but then there was a bafflingly huge number of gods to take care of all sorts of minutiae. Just in the agricultural realm, there was a specific named god of ploughing, of weeding, of protection from mildew and rust, and a god of spreading excrement on the fields. Cloacina was the goddess of the sewers. Terminus was the god of boundary stones. Rome was built upon slavery. About 25% of the population at the end of the Republic were slaves, and there was never a shortage of them. There was never any abolition movement. No one questioned that some people ought to be slaves; it was accepted as a natural state. When there were slave rebellions, the slaves were in revolt over specific bad treatment; they never presumed to act against the institution of slavery. One thing that everyone knows about gladiatorial combat is that a crowd, or a single judge, might be called upon at the end of combat, if the combatants had not finally destroyed one another, to be asked, “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down” in judgement of whether they should live or die. Yes, the thumb signs happened, but the meaning is equivocal. “There is a slight balance,” writes Jones, “in favor of the belief that ‘thumbs up’ actually meant ‘kill’ (i.e., drive the sword into him) and ‘thumbs down’ meant ‘let be’ (i.e, turn the sword away).” On the final page, Jones reflects that the of all the things the Romans handed down to us, “the enrichment of the Anglo-Saxon language is their most inescapable legacy.” There are languages descended from Latin, but English comes from Anglo-Saxon, with a lot of Latinate words brought into England by the Norman French and other sources. So Jones often explains interesting word origins. He tells you how you can foretell the future just like the Romans did, standing to observe birds and seeing if the birds occupied a good side or bad side of the field of view. In other words, you could be an amateur _auspex_, a Latin word that comes from _auis_ “bird” and _specio_ “I inspect.” And from this we get the word “auspicious.”

Academics and those familiar with the history of Ancient Rome may object that Jones’s book is choppy and in such short segments that it cannot present a coherent history. This is not the book for them. For those of us who just want to be informed and entertained, there is at least one bright fact to be found on every page of this well-informed but unstuffy history.
8 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Albert A. Nofi
5.0 out of 5 stars An Amusing Introduction to Roman History
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2017
A summary of the review on StrategyPage.Com

'British classicist Jones, author of "Vote for Caesar", "Reading Ovid", and many other books, gives us an amusing, but surprisingly accurate overview of Roman history. In a dozen roughly chronological chapters, Jones integrates myth, history, social life, personalities, politics, literature, religion, archaeology and more, as he tells the story of Rome from the mythic past through the collapse of the Empire in the West. Along the way he tosses in explanations and critical commentary or analysis of particular events or institutions (e.g. “Elephant Traps,” “Why ‘Latin’?”, “Slave Theory,” “Election Posters”) to help broaden our picture of Roman life and history. Possibly the most irreverent treatment of the subject since Gilbert Abbott à Beckett’s "A Comic History of Rome" (London: 1851), this is not only a good read for anyone interested in Roman history, but arguably a good introduction to the subject for the younger reader.'

For the full review, see StrategyPage.Com
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Oskar S
5.0 out of 5 stars Durchaus empfehlenswert
Reviewed in Germany on October 4, 2018
Verified Purchase
Auch wenn es teilweise etwas durcheinander geht, obwohl Buchaufbau und Inhaltsverzeichnis das anders erwarten lassen, ist dieses Buch voller interessanter Informationen. Meistens liest es sich einfach, manchmal etwas langatmig. Die Informationen widersprechen teilweise häufig geglaubten Klischees lassen sich aber auf Wahrheitsgehalt verifizieren, ich habe keinerlei Fehlinformationen gefunden.
Schön ist, dass es sich nicht um die Geschichte Roms handelt, sonders dass an Hand der Geschichte Besonderheiten und Entwicklungen dargestellt werden. Sehr gut.
Report
Mr. Dominic Burke
5.0 out of 5 stars Very comprehensive overview of Roman history, written in a casual, accessible style.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 20, 2018
Verified Purchase
Loved this book and the format in which the information is set out in bite-sized chunks, organised by both subject matter and chronology. I happened to buy the Kindle version but I would imagine that the book version is so much easier to dip in and out of.
Report
ROBERTO
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent book
Reviewed in Italy on January 29, 2017
Verified Purchase
this book is quite interesting and funny and should be read by the children, instead of history books.
a a
Report
Hereward
4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and entertaining
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2018
Verified Purchase
A good basic outline of Rome and the Romans. Obviously not aimed at the classical scholar but a very good "taster". One reviewer criticized the frequent explanation of the derivation of words. Surely this is all part of the story. Maybe I am unusual in that I am interested in virtually everything apart from sport, so I found this book quite rewarding.
One person found this helpful
 Report
Simon Binning
3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting - though light - introduction to Ancient Rome
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2016
Verified Purchase
Like the guide to Ancient Greece by the same author, this doesn't claim to be a complete history of Rome. Rather it is a taster. Split into chronological chapters, each starts with a summary of events in the period covered, and is followed by short independent sections covering various topics from that era. Some are technical - perhaps about aqueducts, or a prominent person - others may be about a poet or philosopher active at the time.
If you are a regular reader of non-fiction about Rome, then this will probably not teach you anything new, but might still be a light read. If you are a reader of fiction set in Rome, and would like a bit of background to your reading, then this would be a good place to start.
11 people found this helpful
 Report