Perhaps there is a revisionist history of Julius Caesar somewhere that I've missed, so it's unsurprising that Hughes goes along with the accepted portrait of Caesar as a charismatic adventurer, when really Caesar should be bracketed with figures such as Eichmann or Mladic, but then he did write rather well ("You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style," as Nabokov suggested). Caesar also demonstrated a Hannibal Lecter-like level of pretension in addressing his last words to Brutus in Greek (according to some sources at least — Hughes is a little sweeping in his classical references).

What's often overlooked is how often the Romans came close to losing their empire, before sacking Rome became a standard European pastime in the decline so lovingly charted by Gibbon. Hughes gives a good account of the Punic wars and Hannibal and his elephants and the catastrophe for the Romans at Cannae. But again, like Caesar's reputation it's all about good PR. Very few writers ever make reference to the battle of Arausio (near modern Orange) when the Romans again lost their entire army in 105 BC and the only reason that Rome was saved was because the Cimbri tribe was too untogether to get down to Rome.

In his epilogue, Hughes highlights the horror of visiting present-day Rome, a city jam-packed with tourists round the clock, every day of the year; but really what he is describing is the horror of living or visiting anywhere that is worth visiting — Rome, London, Cambridge or any city or town that has a marking on the map of world culture. We've moved from an era of mass tourism to an era of tsunami tourism. Soon it'll be much more pleasant to stay at home and read the book (or watch the Blu-Ray).