History books have tended to concentrate on the leading lights of the time, with lesser players having walk-on parts. Modern historians, on the other hand, are starting to shift the spotlight. Simon Schama, for example, is the champion of the common man.

In the same vein, this newly published book covers the 1,000 years of the Roman Empire, yet concentrates on the rest of the world: the people regarded by the Romans as barbarians. And quite rightly, too, as many of those civilisations outshone the Romans; although not in the military sense of course, otherwise it would have been their Empire rather than the Romans'.

While Rome had its professional armies, and harsh rules of social order, the Greeks, Celts and Persians, among others, were far superior in terms of their arts, technology and scientific knowledge.

The book has two authors: Terry Jones, the ex-Python and writer on medieval England, and Alan Ereira, a TV producer of history programmes. You can tell where the ex-Python takes over the pen by the whimsical, sometimes patronising, turns of phrase: "totally legless", "here's another odd thing" and "a great place for a beach holiday".

The authors cover most of the thousand years of the Roman Empire, extending a little way into the Dark Ages. There are maps, coloured plates and a 'barbarian time-line' at the front which is useful, as the contents page lists 14 chapters only, ignoring the numerous and un-numbered sub-headings in between. The reader is bombarded with a host of facts and details, although entertainingly so. For example, we are told that the Greek Archimedes confounded the Roman invaders time after time with his inventive technological weaponry; that the Romans stole words from the Celtic language; that the Greeks were, until the Romans spoilt everything, on the verge of an industrial revolution and that Roman prostitutes were ordered to colour their hair blond to look like "those Celtic whores".

The Romans either destroyed the cultural achievements of others or adopted them as their own. The authors' conclusion is essentially that most Roman written history is propaganda; or "codswallop" in the words of the ex-Python.