Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 276, Pax, War and Peace in

Rome's Golden Age with Tom Holland.

I imagine for many of you, Tom Holland requires no introduction, but just in case, he is

a London-based historian who has now written three books covering Roman history. He's also written

books about the first millennium, the Greco-Persian War, as well as two particularly groundbreaking books

about religion. The first, in the Shadow of the Sword, was the subject of an interview on this

podcast back in 2014 when we were covering the origins of Islam. Recently he wrote a book called

Dominion, where he charted the influence of Christianity from its capture of the Romans all the

way to modern times. If that sounds at all dry, believe me, it is the opposite. It's an exhilarating

argument that essentially beginning with the Crusades, Western Christianity set itself on the path

towards the Enlightenment, science, atheism, and perhaps even woke. Tom Holland is such a fascinating

writer. He has the skill I so admire in the best historians I've read of taking you back into

the mindset of earlier people, stripping away or perhaps putting back on layers of meaning,

which we've missed out on. His first Roman's only book, Rubicon, covered the fall of the Republic.

His second dynasty took the story from Julius Caesar's death to that of Nero, and his latest

book, Pax, takes us up to the death of Hadrian. I imagine that, like me, you all know the story of

this period pretty well. It's Tom's great skill to tell the story in a way that brings out insights

which you didn't realise were there to be drawn out, and that's what I talk to him about in today's

interview. Tom's books are available everywhere, good books are sold, but if you'd like to listen to one,

then why not try Audible? Audible's massive collection of books and podcasts probably needs

no introduction either, but you could listen to Pax for free if you sign up at audibletrial.com

forward slash Byzantium. In the past, Tom has delegated the reading of these books to voice actors,

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