Literally the best introduction for a total beginner in my opinion: Read Dr. Goldsmith's History of Ancient Rome (which is outdated but schematic and grounded in the classical sources, basically a "schoolboy's history of Rome" from when schoolboys weren't retarded) alongside Garrett Fagan's History of Rome course (easily pirated)

When you want to go deeper:
>Cornell's Beginnings of Rome
>Forster's Critical History of Ancient Rome (goes well with Cornell's maximalism as a minimalist account but is very granular, very exciting book for autists but maybe not for normal humans)
>Syme's Roman Revolution
>Eck's Age of Augustus
>Bury's A History of the Roman Empire from its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius
>first 500 pages of Gibbon (skim the first 150 pages if you don't like them until you get to the narrative)
>Finlay's Ancient Economy
>fun stuff like I, Claudius (Graves) and Imperium (Harris)
>maybe normie shit like SPQR

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