But while the image of this empire in the modern world is of an immutable military might, in reality the imperial system survived because it was flexible. It was far more adaptable than the flailing democracy it replaced in the first century B.C., or the modern British and French empires, which later claimed Rome as a model. In two new books, Tom Holland and Adrian Goldsworthy, both accomplished novelists as well as historians, offer lucid accounts of the challenges inherent to managing this complex imperial enterprise. Holland’s “Pax” concerns itself with a period of relative imperial tranquillity between the suicide of the Roman emperor Nero in 68 A.D. and the death of the emperor Hadrian in 138. Goldsworthy explores the relations between Rome and its most powerful neighbor, the successive Persian regimes ruling what is now Iran and Iraq, from their first encounters in the first century B.C.

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Persons: Adrian Goldsworthy, Tom Holland, Nero, Hadrian, Goldsworthy, ”, Vespasian Organizations: Adrian Goldsworthy PAX Locations: ROME, PERSIA, Roman, Central Europe, North Africa, Rome, Iran, Iraq, Palestine