Ancient History category: 8298 books

From flowers and perfumes to urban sanitation and personal hygiene, smell—a sense that is simultaneously sublime and animalistic—has played a pivotal role in western culture and thought. Greek and Roman writers and thinkers lost no opportunity to connect the smells that bombarded their senses...

This book shows how bubonic plague and smallpox helped end the Hittite Empire, the Bronze Age in the Near East and later the Carthaginian Empire. The book will examine all the possible infectious diseases present in ancient times and show that life was a daily struggle for survival either avoiding...

The world is huge. Lots of people live in it and each group has its own traditions and beliefs. In Africa they follow different kinds of religions. In this book, we’ll talk about Islam and some other traditional religions. What makes one different from the other? How can people with different beliefs live next to each other? There’s plenty more to learn from this book!

The reason why scholars can effectively differentiate one ancient society from the other is because of outstanding features. One of these would be the identifiable art styles that are reflective of cultural, religious and political elements at the time. In this ebook, you’re going to try and identify the art styles of ancient Rome, Egypt and Greece. Let’s get started.

A history of gladiators-with an added bite! It’s hard for modern readers to truly grasp the spectacle that was arena sports in ancient Rome, which pitted man against man and man against beast in mortal combat. Our modern games of football and hockey, or even boxing and MMA, truly pale in...

Italy's Lost Greece is the untold story of the modern engagement with the ancient Greek settlements of South Italy--an area known since antiquity as Magna Graecia. This "Greater Greece," at once Greek and Italian, has continuously been perceived as a region in decline since its archaic golden...

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus composed the monumental universal history ‘Bibliotheca historica’, which comprises the mythic history of the non-Hellenic and Hellenic tribes. Diodorus’ great work spans the destruction of Troy, the glories of Alexander the Great, the history and culture of...

Unravel the history behind of one of the most fascinating ancient civilisations with this engaging, entertaining and educational guide to the ancient Egyptians. With a complete rundown of ancient Egyptian history and culture alongside insights in to the everyday lives of the Egyptians, you’ll discover...

For 30 centuries, before Greece's glory or Rome's grandeur came into being, mankind played out a drama along the banks of the Nile which for sheer splendor, mighty works, and significance to civilization, is unique. The lure of Egyptology is as old as the Pyramids themselves; what is new is the modern...

The lives of Egyptian women were free of the restraints normally placed upon women in the rest of the ancient world, allowing them to exercise a full part in society, recognised as equal with men under the law. Using evidence gleaned from written records, monuments, sculpture, tombpaintings and the...

The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder’s encyclopaedic ‘Natural History’, composed in 37 books, remains an unrivalled compendium of Roman knowledge. Delphi’s Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Latin texts....

Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) is one of the best known of the Ancient Greeks, and his Hippocratic Oath is still in use today. An ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens, Hippocrates is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine, known simply...

Ancient Greece first coined the concept of "democracy", yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker-from Plato and Aristotle onwards- was ambivalent towards or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: the elite perceived majority power as tantamount...

Antisthenes of Athens (c. 445-365 BCE) was a famous ancient disciple of Socrates, senior to Plato by fifteen years and inspirational to Xenophon. He is relevant to two of the greatest turning points in ancient intellectual history, from pre-Socraticism to Socraticism, and from classical Athens to...