“The mediaeval way of thinking differed fundamentally from ours as solely ideas alone were real, facts and things only in so far as they participated in the reality of ideas.”
—Heinz Gotze, Castel del Monte

Frederick II (1194-1250) was a king who fought his entire life against the Roman church. He was one of the last Western sovereigns who was brave enough to defy papal hegemony. Twice he was expelled from the Roman church. Frederick II was also one of the most exotic men of his time. He spoke six languages fluently - not only German, French and Italian, but Latin, Greek and Arabic. He was a poet and philosopher who studied Arabic science and culture. He understood natural science, mathematics, physics, geometry, astronomy and medicine.

The Punic Wars: Rome, Carthage, and the Struggle for the Mediterranean by Nigel Bagnall. Hardcover: 304 pages. (New York, NY: Thomas Dunne, 2003), Amazon.com $19.77.

The Punic Wars : Rome, Carthage, and the Struggle for the Mediterranean is really bold historical prose capturing one of the most resounding conflicts in antiquity between the Carthaginians and the Romans. The Punic Wars were actually a protracted series of three wars between 264 B.C. and 146 B.C. For the first time in United States, Thomas Duanne books has brought British historian Nigel Bagnall's epic history to print in 2005. The Punic Wars forever changed the destiny of Rome and marked their unfettered ascent to becoming an imperial power to be reckoned with. These two Mediterranean peoples stood in enmity one against the other, and their climatic struggle would set the balance of power in favor of Rome for the ages. In the third century before Christ, the great naval power in the world was not Rome but Carthage. The Carthaginians were descendants of the seafaring Semitic race the Phoenicians and their campaign of colonization inevitably brought them into a clash of arms with the Romans who had imperial ambitions of their own. As the Romans solidified their control over the Italian peninsula, Carthage extended their control over North Africa's entire arable coastline. Likewise, when Carthage expanded its colonies to Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily — they sparked a clash with the Romans. Treaties were broken and honor was at stake. The Romans took over Sicily seeking a buffer zone to minimize hit-and-run naval raids on the Italic peninsula. Hamilcar Barca and Hasdrubal sought to create a Carthaginian bastion on the Iberian (i.e. Spain) and its ancillary islands. What is more, the bold gambit of Hannibal is brought to life, as his ambition in Iberia is recaptured with amazing detail. The author meticulously documents Hannibal's painstaking and arduous transalpine march as his men struggled to brave the elements of Gaul, as well as the climatic battle with the Romans.

The former soldier Nigel Bagnall captures the epic clash of personalities with amazing detail including the decimation of Carthage's Navy. An account of Rome's brutul subjugation of Carthage and her colonies is captured with astonishing detail. Cato's merciless quip "delenda est Carthago" ("Carthage must be destroyed") surmised the belligerent Roman policy toward their Mediterranean neighbors to the south. Carthage itself would be utterly vanquished and plowed over with pillars of salt. Bagnall gives life to the ancient historical accounts in a keen narrative history.

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland. Softcover: 464 pages. (New York, NY: Anchor, 2004), Amazon.com $10.20.

Review by Ryan Setliff

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland is an ambitious and bold historic epic about one of the most pivotal times in Roman history since the founding of the Republic.

In the year 49 B.C., some seven-hundred years after the founding of Rome, the appointed dictator Julius Caesar crossed a border river known as the Rubicon and he forever changed history. The refusal of Julius Caesar to abdicate his office along with his forbidden march into the grand city plunged Rome into a cataclysmic civil war. With Caesar's ascent was the death knell of the Republic, and Tom Holland gives a mesmerizing account of the bloody transformation of Rome from a republic to empire. Rome would keep some of its republican strictures, forms and persisted as a Republic if only in name. Julius Caesar inaugurated a new age for Rome-the age of Imperial Rome, which was marked by a succession of demagogues and the occasional philosopher-king. Despite the brief peace during the Pax Romana, war became the new order of the day. Author Tom Holland captures the gritty battles and the political intrigue with amazing clarity and he paints an excellent background history of ancient Rome for the layperson. From Cicero's bold denunciations of the Republic's enemies to Pompey's ambitious machinations to the bold gambit of Cato, this is a spellbinding narrative history of Rome in the century before Christ.