Richard Stoneman: 7 books

Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire from 486–465 B.C., has gone down in history as an angry tyrant full of insane ambition. The stand of Leonidas and the 300 against his army at Thermopylae is a byword for courage, while the failure of Xerxes’ expedition has overshadowed all the other achievements...

An exploration of how the Greeks reacted to and interacted with India from the third to first centuries BCE When the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander’s army reached India in 326 BCE, they entered a new and strange world. They knew a few legends and travelers’ tales, but their categories...

Alexander the Great by Richard Stoneman is an introduction to the career and impact of the great Macedonian conqueror and the main themes of his reign. As well as tackling problems of interpretation, the author includes: an examination of the written and other sources and the problems of working...

Mystery surrounds the parentage of Alexander, the prince born to Queen Olympias. Is his father Philip, King of Macedonia, or Nectanebo, the mysterious sorcerer who seduced the queen by trickery? One thing is certain: the boy is destined to conquer the known world. He grows up to fulfil this prophecy,...

He was destined to rule the world ... A prince is born under a star of good fortune. It is prophesied that he will become the greatest king of all time. Alexander grows up to fulfil this destiny - powerful as a lion, skilled in the art of war and leader of a vast army. Soon his fame...

In the ancient Greek-speaking world, writing about the past meant balancing the reporting of facts with shaping and guiding the political interests and behaviours of the present. Ancient Historiography on War and Empire shows the ways in which the literary genre of writing history developed to guide...