B iographies of ancient Greeks and Romans, recommended on Five Books:
“in The Rise and Fall of Athens , you get to see four stages in the development of Athens over time. In the early stages, Plutarch has to push back into legendary and mythological times, with the founders like Theseus and even Solon…Then we get into the lives of the earliest real historical figures, such as Themistocles and Aristides. They were living at the time of the Persian Wars, when Greece was under attack by this large power and managed to fight it off. The Greeks that were living at this time realized that things were different before and after the invasion of the Persians” Read more...
The best books on Leadership: Lessons from the Ancients
Jeffrey Beneker ,
Classicist
“Thucydides really sees Pericles as the foremost citizen of the time. He even gives his name to this era: today we call it ‘the Periclean era.’ Azoulay gives a slightly different interpretation. He’s interested in the ways in which Pericles was constrained by the political circumstances, and was guided or constrained in his policies by the people.” Read more...
The best books on Thucydides
Johanna Hanink ,
Classicist
“This is a book that’s impossible to write, in a way. It’s a biography of Socrates, who refused to write anything down, as a matter of principle. Socrates felt that the written word was a bad thing for philosophy (and life) because although it looked intelligent, every time you asked a question it always gave the same response, whoever asked the question. Whereas if you spoke to somebody, you could adjust what you said according to who was in front of you…Armand D’Angour has attempted to write the story of Socrates’s life using his knowledge of Classics and ancient history. He has analysed the sources that exist: largely Plato’s writings—his famous dialogues—and also Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues, which are quite different in style and present a different, slightly more ploddy Socrates.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books of 2019
Nigel Warburton ,
Philosopher
“He knows everyone and shows up everywhere, so if you follow his story, as Stuttard does, you wind up running into every major figure and place in the Greek world in this period. So actually, just because he got around so much, Alcibiades is a very effective way of tracing the bigger story of this historical period.” Read more...
The best books on Thucydides
Johanna Hanink ,
Classicist
“Agricola is a tribute to his father-in-law and it’s really nice to have this family connection. A lot of ancient literature can oftentimes seem so distant and cold that it’s hard to see the human connection, but it’s strong in this book. In the introduction and especially in the conclusion you can feel the real bond that Tacitus must have felt with this person.” Read more...
The best books on Leadership: Lessons from the Ancients
Jeffrey Beneker ,
Classicist
“Suetonius’s work is a collection of biographies of the first 12 Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar through to Domitian. And it really had a crucial sense of shaping our understanding of Imperial Rome as a place of vice and savagery and sexual depravity and violent, brutal, bawdy splendour…the shenanigans of Caligula, who indulged in incest, forced prostitution…or Nero, who actually went one better than Caligula by having his mother killed and is said to have burnt down Rome, although he probably didn’t.” Read more...
The best books on Ancient Rome
Tom Holland ,
Classicist
“Messalina, the wife of the Roman emperor Claudius, was not so lucky, going down in the history books as a debauched adulteress. In Messalina: A Story of Empire, Slander and Adultery, PhD student Honor Cargill-Martin makes a valiant attempt to restore her reputation, though it’s hard going as little is known about her, beyond that she was a young (perhaps very young) bride.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell ,
Journalist
“The Lives is a big folio book with a lot of close type. I don’t know where Shakespeare got it, but he seems to have had it early in his career. Some people think that episodes in an early play like Titus Andronicus may borrow from it, but he uses Plutarch all the way through his Roman plays—Julius Caesar , Coriolanus , Antony and Cleopatra —through to Timon of Athens , which comes out of a small story in the Lives . So, Plutarch’s Lives was a great fund of Roman and Greek history for Elizabethan dramatists.” Read more...
Shakespeare’s Sources
Robert S Miola ,
Classicist
“One interesting book for fans of the great epic poem of the Augustus years, the Aeneid, is a literary biography of its author, Vergil. Vergil: The Poet’s Life is by American scholar and translator Sarah Ruden. Other than his poem, we don’t know much about the author, so Ruden has to do a lot of heavy lifting, but why not? Ruden recently translated the Aeneid , and you can also read her Five Books interview about Vergil.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell ,
Journalist
“Spartacus was originally from Thrace, northeast of Greece, on the Black Sea. It was a land of warrior horsemen that had just been conquered by Rome. Spartacus survived and was welcomed into the Roman cavalry – he fought campaigns in Greece on Rome’s side. He learned Roman-style combat as a legionary in the Roman Empire. But somehow, and we don’t know how this happened, he lost his status. Maybe he was captured, or he was insubordinate, that would seem quite likely. Anyway, he was sold as a slave, and was such a good fighter that he was sent to gladiator school in Italy. There he was trained in brutal fighting skills and became a champion in them – and then he rebelled. He starts with 70 fellow gladiator slaves in Italy, and incites this rebellion which grows until he’s got an army of 60,000” Read more...
The best books on Enemies of Ancient Rome
Adrienne Mayor ,
Classicist
“In another Yale series, Ancient Lives, there’s a new biography of the 2nd-century Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, whose book, Meditations , is often recommended for those interested in the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. It’s by Donald Robertson, a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist and a firm believer that Stoicism has much to teach us in our daily lives.” Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell ,
Journalist
“Diogenes is very keen on making this a personal story. He’s both interested in telling us all sorts of odd and fantastical stories about the individual philosophers, but he’s also very interested in showing how each of these individual philosophers was influenced directly and personally by other predecessors. I think of it as a family tree of philosophies with Epicurus as the final branch of one of those trees.” Read more...
The best books on The Epicureans
James Warren ,
Philosopher
“it’s very rare that you work in an academic field and there is a secondary work that is just indisputably superior to everything else. An agent once said to me that Brown’s book is known in her field as a “category killer”. No one else dared to write a biography of Augustine, really until the late 1990s. So, for 30 years—for basically a full generation—that was the work on Augustine.” Read more...
The Best Augustine Books
Catherine Conybeare ,
Classicist
For historical fiction that’s based on the primary sources, we also recommend:
In Augustus , American novelist John Williams (1922-1994), author of Stoner Washington Post hails the book as "The finest historical novel ever written by an American." If you're at all interested in Augustus , the book is unmissable.
Read expert recommendations
“It’s the story of Cicero, but it’s narrated by his slave and secretary Tiro. You have this interesting tension, wherein we have a story of all-consuming ambition, narrated by someone whose own ambitions and prospects are completely limited by their enslavement—and yet he does love and is devoted to Cicero. Beyond all of this, it’s just a very fun, propulsive narrative and brilliantly-done courtroom drama—or sequence of courtroom drama set pieces—taking place within this vividly conjured, well-researched late Republic Rome. It’s an excellent character study and a fun, fantastic read.” Read more...
Historical Novels Set During the Classical Era
Ferdia Lennon ,
Novelist
“The novel can be funny, it can be shocking. There are plenty of plots and counter-plots, betrayals and murders. Claudius somehow keeps surviving, almost because no one sees him as worth assassinating. And a wonderful layer of dramatic irony hovers over the whole piece, because we know that this completely ignored, marginalised figure in the Roman court is going to become the emperor. That runs like a vein of dynamite through the novel.” Read more...
Historical Novels Set During the Classical Era
Ferdia Lennon ,
Novelist
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