Author Description

This first part of the account of the hegemons that shaped the Western World is a thousand-year story involving ancient Rome and the nature of its world which involved the empires it fought against, the lands and people it conquered, the "Barbarian" invasions it defeated and failed to stop, and the influence it exerted in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, making it the target of powerful non-Romans determined to control it while cherishing its civilization, the positive attributes that constitute the core of the Western World today led by hegemons of Germanic roots that are for all intents and purposes the heirs of ancient Rome and its offshoots following the empire's dismemberment in the West. The author leads the reader hand-in-hand through the good, bad, ugly and legendary emperors and rulers who shaped that era of antiquity in Europe, putting the spotlight now and then on bigger-than-life figures such as Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the outstanding military strategists who defeated the greatest Carthaginian war hero Hannibal; he introduces us to some of the renowned Roman leaders like Julius Caesar, Pompey, Alexander Severus, Aurelian and Gratian who were assassinated; and he opens the door to the splendid legacies of other larger than life Roman rulers like Augustus Caeser, Tiberius, Diocletian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Vespasian, Hadrian, Justinian I, Theodosius I, Constantine The Great. Even inglorious emperors like Nero, Caligula and Elagabalus got the spotlight in the same manner as some of the usurpers like Maxentius, Julian the Apostate and Magnus Maximus who undermined the stability of the Roman Empire. The author also shines the spotlight on some of the heroic Barbarian characters that contributed to Rome's demise such as Attila the Hun, the Gothic leaders Fritigern, Alaric and Theodoric, and the Frankish kings Theudemer, Chlodio and Merovech, all of whom paved the way for the establishment of Germanic kingdoms on what w