In response to
>>>/leftypol/617455First attachment is a decent but dry textbook over what little we know of the Roman economy.
Second attachment is from an economist who says Rome operated as a sort of market economy, I haven't read it fully but there's nothing I've seen that is outrageous.
Third is a more modern account of the "fall" of the Western Roman empire. Gibbons obviously had a motive when he wrote his book, to blame Christianity for the fall. In his writing, Christianity literally brought the apocalypse to Rome, and if Europe has any hope to not repeat history's mistakes, it was to embrace the enlightenment and perhaps even atheism (gasp!).
Adrian Goldsworthy is a reliable historian in my book, so I also recommend his biographies on the two big names in Roman history. They act as a sort of entry point into all things Roman, because it is impossible to understand the circumstances they were both facing without understanding the surrounding geo-political (gauls), economic (slaves), and societal (founding myth, patronage, auctoritas, tradition, virtue, etc.) functions of Rome.