Parallel Lives, Parallel Nations, is a narrative history of Rome & the Jews, their relations and their worlds from 161 BC to 135 AD. The time frame effectively covers the rise and fall of Roman-Jewish relations, beginning with the first Jewish delegation sent to Rome by the Maccabees, and culminating with the bloody Bar-Kochba Revolt some three hundred years later during the reign of Hadrian. The book covers in depth Rome's fall as a republic and rise as an empire alongside the parallel rise, fall, and eventual destruction of the Jewish national state. Largely set in the first centuries BC and AD, the work addresses two extremely personality-driven centuries in which the most familiar figures of antiquity---Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Herod, Jesus---all appeared upon the historical scene. A political era driven by very individualistic and even operatic events, this history, while wholly factual, reads like a non-fiction novel, with each chapter ending in a suspenseful fashion. Volume One follows the course of events from 161 to 4 BC, up through the reign of Herod the Great. This is the period which saw the rise and conclusion of Rome's civil wars, the first phase of the pax romana, and the struggles of Judea as it becomes an independent nation, only to find itself pulled into Rome's powerful orbit. It is an era of warlords, political adventurers, and warrior kings.