The third edition of this successful brief survey of Roman history, aiming to provide a comprehensive introduction, mostly to undergraduate students, differs from the previous ones in a stronger attention to the Republican period, in a greater number of illustrations and maps and in a consistent update of the accompanying website, which had been introduced for the second edition of 2008. As in the previous edition, the first half of the volume is dedicated to a chronological overview of Roman history from its origins to the death of Constantine, while the second part expands on different topics, such as Roman religion, society, art and literature. The volume offers a very broad picture of Roman history and culture, in which only the institutional aspects are rather neglected – which would be particularly important to highlight for undergraduate courses. It is a great achievement of the authors to be able to condense the amount of information contained in this volume in less than 300 pages, and in a style which is accessible and interesting. In particular, the abundance of single stories and anecdotes conveys Roman mentality in a very effective way to the audience addressed. None the less, as happens with a handbook, the main question to be asked is whether the reviewer would adopt it for his own taught modules – and unluckily the answer to this question is definitely no. In spite of all the advantages of the book, already underlined by the reviews of the first two editions (P.H. Barker, CR 47 [1997], 217–8; S. Bartera, BMCR 2009.04.14), the volume is flawed by too many extremely annoying mistakes, which is not acceptable in a reference work aimed at undergraduate students: on the first page, for example, 476 c.e. is indicated as the year of the death of Romulus Augustulus. The Roman institutions are considered anachronistically to represent the executive, legislative and judicial powers (p. 23), possessio and proprietas are regularly confused (p. 30) and so on. More problematically, the underlying approach is a strongly positivistic one, conveying to students the message that studying history means ‘searching for the truth’ (pp. 2–3). This becomes especially apparent in the first section on the origins of Rome, in which myths and legends are narrated as historical facts, discussing the ‘chronological chasm’ between Aeneas and the archaeological remains, and claiming that they always hide a kernel of ‘historical truth’ (p. 12). The potential impact of this old and discredited approach on students is far too dangerous for me to recommend this book. Additionally, some parts have not been consistently updated and still present very old-fashioned theories and interpretations: if the reviewer of the first edition praised, for example, the presentation of the Gracchi, this is now unacceptable, relying as it does on old theories on the expansion of the latifundia and on a strict distinction of the Roman political class into optimates and populares. Finally, a lecturer would not want students to be confronted with the many typographical errors – most of them in Latin words and names. Therefore, in spite of the book's very innovative elements and its really successful structure, it seems very dangerous to suggest it as a reference book to those who are just starting their study of Roman history.