Addressing a marginalized era of Greek and Roman history, Taken at the Flood offers a compelling narrative of Rome's conquest of Greece.

Where does the name Britain come from and who gave it? The astronomer Pytheas of Massalia (Marseille) exploring the North Atlantic in the 320s B.C. discovered, measured, circumnavigated and named Britain 265 years before the Romans. He took measurements at five points on his journey, which have been verified. He corrected the position of the North Pole and developed the theory that the earth was a sphere. Marseille (Massalia) in France was founded by Greeks in 600 B.C. en route to get silver from Spain. Due to the Persian invasion in 546 B.C. Greek refugees from Ionia swelled their western colonies and settlements. Marseille now led and founded several cities of its own in France, Spain, Monaco and Corsica still existing today as Nice, Monaco, Antibes, Le Brusc, Agde, Roses, Sant Marti d'Empuries and Aleria. Marseille saved Rome from extinction when besieged by the Celts in 390 B.C. and played a crucial part in stopping supplies from Spain reaching Hannibal fighting the Romans in Italy. Hannibal and his elephants went over the Alps to avoid a well-fortified Marseille blocking the fabled coastal road used by mythical Hercules. Aristotle, Strabo and Cicero praised Marseille's government as the 'best ordered' of all the aristocracies. Marseille (Massalia) the city founded by merchants could be described, given another definition of an empire, as 'an extensive enterprise under a unified authority'. Marseille lasted as an independent Greek city-state over 700 years: continuing as a Greek city under the Romans: and for a period under the Franks from the sixth century A.D. After a long siege Marseille suffered its first defeat by Julius Caesar in the civil war with Pompey losing most of its empire. With Caesar dead attempts to regain its lost territories were blocked by Mark Antony while the city itself was allowed to stay independent. Marseille continued as a Greek university city of famous schools where 'notable' Romans and the consul Agricola, Governor of Britain, were educated. Quotes from primary sources give you the words of the time together with archaeological evidence on a remarkable and little known part of our history.

'The toga was often to be seen among them': with these words the Roman Historian Tacitus describes the Britons adopting the Roman way of life at an early stage of their long history as Roman provincials.

On October 28, 1940, the Italian army under Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. The British had insisted on guaranteeing Greek and Turkish neutrality, despite the fact that Greece was never more than a limited campaign in an unlimited war as far as they were concerned. The British, however, were never quite sure that Greece was not their last foothold in Europe, and they harbored dreams of holding on to this last bastion of civilization and of protecting it with a diplomatic and military alliance -- a Balkan bloc. These dreams bore little relation to military and economic realities, and so the stage was set for tragedy. In Diary of a Disaster, Robin Higham details the unfolding events from the invasion, though the Italian defeat and the subsequent German invasion, until the British evacuation at the end of April 1941. The Greek army, while tough, was small and based largely upon reserves. They were also largely equipped with obsolete French, Polish, and Czech arms for which there was now no other source than captured Italian materiel. Transportation was also lacking as Greece lacked all-weather roads over much of the country, had no all-weather airport, and only one rail line connecting Athens with Salonika and Florina in the north. Added to the woes of the Greek military, the British commander-in-chief for the Middle East, Sir Archibald Wavell, faced huge logistical challenges as well. Based in Cairo, he was responsible for a huge theatre of operation, from hostile Vichy French forces in Syria to the Boers in South Africa nearly six thousand miles away. His air force was comprised of only a handful of modern aircraft with biplanes and outdated, early monoplanes making up the bulk of his force. Radar was also unavailable to him. His navy was woefully short on destroyers and often incommunicado while at sea. While Wavell had roughly 500,000 men under his command, he was severely limited in how he could use them. The South Africans could only be deployed in East Africa and the Austrians and New Zealanders could not be employed without the consent of their home governments. In short, Churchill had instructed Wavell to offer support that he did not really have and could not afford to give to the Greeks. Higham walks readers through these events as they unfold like a modern Greek tragedy. Using the format of a diary, he recounts day-by-day the British efforts though the failure of Operation Lustre, which no one outside of London thought had any chance of stemming the Nazi tide in Greece.

This book provides an authoritative new narrative of the Roman conquest of Britain, from the two campaigns of Julius Caesar up until the construction of Hadrian's Wall. It highlights the motivations of Roman commanders and British resistance fighters during a key period of Britain's history.