Saylor employs the time-worn but effective vehicle of two family's fortunes to carry the load of a millennium of Roman history. From its founding myths to the end of the Republic, Roma provides a vast, broad, but shallow view of the city and the world it came to dominate. Choosing to focus on the lives of individual members of the fictional Pinarii and Potitii families as the generations pass in and around the city, Saylor denies us a front-row seat at the events that shaped Rome's rise to domination of the Western world. Epic events from the battles of the Punic Wars to Caesar's conquests are related to the reader through the conversations and exposition of the characters, giving the novel at times the feel of a stage play.

Nonetheless, Saylor deserves a golden diadem himself for taking on the arduous task of condensing a thousand years of history into a few hundred pages. The pace is brisk, the characters often well defined and memorable, and Saylor's schematic maps of the city's growth over the ages help establish Roma firmly in the imagination. If you have an interest in Rome, and want to gain a feeling for life and politics in the greatest city of the ancient world, then you must read Roma.