Fields of Mars

A gripping history of the end of the Roman Empire that captures the atmosphere and immediacy of a watershed moment in human civilization.

In Fields of Mars, Oxford-trained classicist and polyglot Daniel Metcalfe brilliantly reconstructs, almost year by year, the astonishingly rapid unravelling of the Roman Empire, showing how a state that seemed militarily dominant, economically robust, and politically fairly stable could unravel within the space of a few generations.

Rather than surveying the grand sweep of history from Olympian heights, in Fields of Mars, Metcalf operates closer to street level, travelling across modern Europe, from the Danube frontier to Ravenna, from Spain to Turkey, to follow key figures from Rome's final decades.

Emperors and refugees, generals and bishops, warlords and queens emerge in these pages as living characters, whose accumulated decisions and mistakes cause one of history's greatest geopolitical ruptures.

Brimming with first-rate scholarship, Metcalf's vivid prose holds the readers attention and builds suspens until the final page while challenging preconcieved notions about Rome and its fall. Fields of Mars illuminates a complex moment in history and separates truth from legend.