Ancient History category: 8298 books

You know that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but just how did a cluster of small hilltop villages expand to become one of the greatest empires in history? Why did Romulus kill his brother Remus? How was a legion organized? Did people really speak Latin? What entertainment could you see at the...

The extraordinary story of the intermingled civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, spanning more than six millennia from the late Bronze Age to the seventh century The magnificent civilization created by the ancient Greeks and Romans is the greatest legacy of the classical world. However,...

The story of Egypt is the story of history itself—the endless rise and fall, the life and death and life again of the eternal human effort to endure, enjoy, and understand the mystery of our universe. Emerging from the ancient mists of time, Egypt met the challenge of the mystery in a glorious evolution...

Offering fascinating insights into the people and politics of the ancient near Eastern kingdoms, Trevor Bryce uses the letters  of the five Great Kings of Egypt, Babylon, Hatti, Mitanni and Assyria as the focus of a fresh look at this turbulent and volatile region in the late Bronze Age. Numerous...

Historians since Herodotus and Thucydides have claimed that the year 483 BCE marked a turning point in the history of Athens. For it was then that Themistocles mobilized the revenues from the city's highly productive silver mines to build an enormous war fleet. This income stream is thought to have...

Classical Greek Oligarchy thoroughly reassesses an important but neglected form of ancient Greek government, the "rule of the few." Matthew Simonton challenges scholarly orthodoxy by showing that oligarchy was not the default mode of politics from time immemorial, but instead emerged alongside,...

The concept of human rights has a long history. Its practical origins, as distinct from its theoretical antecedents, are said to be comparatively recent, going back no further than the American and French Bills of Rights of the eighteenth century. Even those landmarks are seen as little more than...

We all have choices to make in our lives. How do we know if our decisions are the correct ones? How can we tell if our judgment is sound? Will the abandoned choices, the lost options, the lives we never led, haunt us like spectral reproaches? Will we be surrounded by wraiths of lives unlived, wistfully...

                To write the history of a great people during a course of more than seven hundred years in about as many pages is a task of which the difficulty, best appreciated by those who have attempted it, may not unfairly plead for leniency of construction. No one can be more conscious...

M. Perrot's name as a classical scholar and archæologist, and M. Chipiez's as a penetrating critic of architecture, stand so high that any work from their pens is sure of a warm welcome from all students of the material remains of antiquity. These volumes are the first instalment of an undertaking...

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who was largely responsible for shaping Western philosophy as it is known today.  Aristotle, who was one of Plato’s students and would later tutor Alexander the Great, was also regarded as the world’s first scientist and his many writings are still revered today.  This edition of The History of Animals includes a table of contents. 

The history of Arabia naturally divides itself into three periods, the Ancient, the Military, and the Modern. The first carries us down to the age of Mohammed, and is called by the Arabs the Times of Ignorance. The second includes the wars of the Saracens, and the empire of the caliphs. The third...

In a series of studies, Ian Moyer explores the ancient history and modern historiography of relations between Egypt and Greece from the fifth century BCE to the early Roman empire. Beginning with Herodotus, he analyzes key encounters between Greeks and Egyptian priests, the bearers of Egypt's ancient...

Polybius boldly declared that 'now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the unknown' (4.40.2). And yet, in reality, the significance of myth did not diminish as the borders of the known world expanded. Storytelling...