Since we’re on the subject of Rome a friend of mine recently turned me on to Dan Carlin’s podcast series called Hardcore History. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I started with his discussion of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul called The Celtic Holocaust, then his series on WWI and am now almost done with his series on the fall of the Roman Republic.
I read about 2000 pages after watching Claudius on PBS and reading I Claudius and Claudius The God. i started with Livy up to the second war with Carthage and then read two or three authors concurrent till the year of the 4 emperors (AD 69). I still have some books around on later period but suffered burnout. Watch all the mini-series and movies I can find on Rome.