Ancient History category: 8298 books

The ancient Greeks gave us our alphabet and much of our scientific, medical, and cultural language; they invented democracy, atomic theory, and the rules of logic and geometry; laid the foundations of philosophy, history, tragedy, and comedy; and debated everything from the good life and the role...

Here, from award-winning historian William Harlan Hale, is the ever-fascinating story of ancient Greece - from the Bronze-Age cultures of Crete and Mycenae, the rise of the Greek city-states, and the wars with Persia to the golden age of Athens under Pericles, the Hellenistic age after Alexander's conquests, and, finally, the slow decline to the status as a Roman province.

Ancient Rome was an Italic civilization that began on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants. In...

A second century Greek official of Alexandria, Appian wrote twenty-four books of ‘Roman History’, eleven of which have survived complete. Exploring conquests from Rome’s earliest beginnings to the times of Trajan, Appian’s great work continues to be regarded as a valuable source of information...

Amazons—fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world—were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus...

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still...

Inspired during a trip to Rome to write a work that would come to define a large portion of his life, Gibbon proceeded to write one of the most ambitious histories in the English language. "The History" is an epic narrative, comprised of six volumes, that covers thirteen centuries of Roman...

This “insightful” biography separates the woman from the legend and “offers a panorama of ancient Egyptian history” (Publishers Weekly).   For centuries, historians have scarcely deviated from the portrayal of Cleopatra as an Eastern temptress bent on bringing down the great men of Rome....

Alexandria was the greatest cultural capital of the ancient world. Accomplished classicist and author Theodore Vrettos now tells its story for the first time in a single volume. His enchanting blend of literary and scholarly qualities makes stories that played out among architectural wonders of the...

During the period from Rome's Stone Age beginnings on the Tiber River to its conquest of the Italian peninsula in 264 B.C., the Romans in large measure developed the social, political, and military structure that would be the foundation of their spectacular imperial success. In this comprehensive...

Jenny March’s acclaimed Dictionary of Classical Mythology, first published in 1998 but long out of print, has been extensively revised and expanded including a completely new set of beautiful line-drawing illustrations for this Oxbow edition. It is a comprehensive A – Z guide to Greek and Roman...

Inspired during a trip to Rome to write a work that would come to define a large portion of his life, Gibbon proceeded to write one of the most ambitious histories in the English language. "The History" is an epic narrative, comprised of six volumes, that covers thirteen centuries of Roman...

An intellectual adventure through ancient France revealing how Caesar’s conquest of Gaul changed the course of French culture, forever transforming modern Europe. Julius Caesar's conquests in Gaul in the 50s BC were bloody, but the cultural revolution they brought in their wake forever transformed...

Inspired during a trip to Rome to write a work that would come to define a large portion of his life, Gibbon proceeded to write one of the most ambitious histories in the English language. "The History" is an epic narrative, comprised of six volumes, that covers thirteen centuries of Roman...