For Livy (59 B.C. - A.D. 17), the glorious early history of Rome provide both an example and a warning to his own degenerate times. After the decisive defeat of Hannibal in the Secondary Punic War (218-201), Rome faced a series of challenges from the East - to emerge as master of the Mediterranean in 167 B.C. It is Livy who, by the sheer power of is historical imagination, creates from the bald and often inaccurate sources an enthralling narrative, full of drama and colour, compelling personalities and magnificent oratory. With her triumphs over the heirs of Alexander the Great in the Macedonian Wars, world leadership passed forever from Greece to Rome; and Livy shows us the men, heroic but human, who took part in an epoch-making event.