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The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West
 
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The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West (Hardcover)

by Adrian Murdoch (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £18.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Sutton Publishing Ltd (23 Nov 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0750944749
  • ISBN-13: 978-0750944748
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 267,163 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
"The Last Roman" is the only biography about Romulus Augustulus. It focuses on the personalities behind this powerful story and reveals the world into which Romulus was born - an empire that was about to die. Author Adrian Murdoch explores how Romulus's father Orestes, secretary to Attila the Hun, rose through the ranks to become kingmaker; how all was lost to another usurper in an Italy wracked with civil war; and how Romulus found peace at last, founding a monastery. This dramatic and poignant story of politics, decline and loss has inspired. Drawing on extensive new archaeological and historical research and using numerous contemporary sources, many translated for the first time since the nineteenth century, "The Last Roman" is the vivid story of an empire breathing its last.

About the Author
Adrian Murdoch is a journalist specialising in history, business and geopolitical issues. His book The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World was published by Sutton in 2003 and in 2006 Sutton will publish his Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars About time this book was written, 23 Feb 2007
By Gareth Power - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The tale of Romulus Augustus has heretofore been a much-neglected one. I have struggled in vain for years to find anyone with anything of note to say about this dying of the light in the Roman west.

Journalist and "Bread and Circuses" blogger Adrian Murdoch does a very fine job of gathering together the limited extant sources to add context and texture to the murky happenings of 475/6. It's very well written, is highly accessible, and is also quite witty.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Highly Readable Biography, 13 Aug 2008
By D. Evans - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Adrian Murdoch has produced a number of brilliant books on the Later Roman Empire, including the fantastic 'The Last Pagan', a biography of Julian the Apostate.
This book is a look at the life of the last Roman Emperor of the West, the boy ruler called Romulus Augustulus. Writing a biography of this mysterious figure must have been daunting, as very little is known about him. The ancient scholars never recorded his date or place of death, or much else about him. So not only is this a biography, but it is also a detective story, as Murdoch attempts to reconstruct the Emperor's life from the fragments of history.

We also learn about the background events of Romulus's life, including the exploits of his father, Orestes, who was one of Attila the Hun's henchmen. Ironically, Attila's other henchman was a man named Edeco who would become the father of Odovacer, Romulus's overthrower.
Yet the main force of the book are the events surrounding the fall of the Western Empire, especially the last rulers from Petronius Maximus onwards. The years 475/476 are given a lot of attention, which gives you a detailed look at the Empire's dying moments.
The book then finishes with a look at different portrayls of Romulus Augustulus in popular culture, from novels, plays and film.

The book is wonderfully written, and its one of the most readable books I've come across in years. I read it all in one afternoon, and was thoroughly impressed with how Mr. Murdoch had handelled the limited historical and archaeological evidence. The book also contains a few pictures, from photographs of coins, diptychs, cameos; to scenes from Hollywood films and paintings.

As far as I know this is the only accessible biograpghy of Romulus Augustulus in print. If you have an interest in this fascinating figure, and the world of late Antiquity, then this book should be high on your reading list. Highly Recommended!
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3.0 out of 5 stars Lively account of a crucial epoch, 20 Jul 2009
By Guy Mannering (Maidenhead, England) - See all my reviews
The known historical facts about the life of Romulus Augustulus, last emperor of the western Roman empire, can be summarised in a few paragraphs and it's frankly impossible to write a biography of him. This book provides the reader with a clear, entertaining and easily digestible exposition of the events that stretch from the sack of Rome by Alaric in AD 410 to the death of the Gothic king Theoderic a little more than a hundred years later during which time the western empire and its mighty army just evaporated. There's little new here but readers exploring this period for the first time will find it a lot easier-going than ploughing through Gibbon. There's some judicious speculation about Romulus' later years but the boy, who was never anything more than a teenage puppet, and the man he became, remain inevitably ciphers. The epoch was important, not Romulus himself. The only part of this book I didn't much care for was the final chapter in which the author explores the appearance of Romulus and the other main dramatis personae of the period such his father Orestes and Attila the Hun in art, music and literature. Partial as I am to paintings, novels, films and mini-series on classical themes, I found the chapter overlong and not especially enlightening, in fact it seemed to pad out a relatively slender book. For the new student anxious to learn more about this period it would surely have been better to round things off with a summary account of the ruinous Gothic wars that brought to an end the relatively benign Gothic rule that followed the reign of Romulus and which mark the moment when the curtain finally came down on the late antique world.
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