• The best books on Sparta - Histories by Herodotus
  • The best books on Sparta - Spartan Reflections by Paul Cartledge
  • The best books on Sparta - Spartan Women by Sarah Pomeroy
  • The best books on Sparta - Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield
  • The best books on Sparta - Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta by Stephen Hodkinson

The best books on Sparta, recommended by Andrew Bayliss

Their reputation for self-discipline and self-denial made their way into the English language, but what the ancient Spartans were really like remains a source of debate among scholars, not least because they wrote little themselves. Andrew Bayliss, Senior Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Birmingham and author of an excellent, short book on The Spartans, talks us through what we know about the heroes of Thermopylae, including the darker sides of their culture and society.

  • The best books on Augustus - Catiline’s War, The Jugurthine War, Histories Sallust (trans. AJ Woodman)
  • The best books on Augustus - Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary by Alison Cooley (editor) & Augustus
  • The best books on Augustus - Rome's Cultural Revolution by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
  • The best books on Augustus - The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome by J. Bert Lott
  • The best books on Augustus - Augustan Culture by Karl Galinsky

The best books on Augustus, recommended by Peter Wiseman

Is it possible that Augustus was not the first Roman emperor, but the last of Rome’s great populist champions? That’s what classicist Peter Wiseman argues in his book, The House of Augustus: A Historical Detective Story. Drawing on a lifetime of research and writing on this period, the emeritus professor of classics and ancient history gives a brilliant overview of the Augustan age, and recommends what to read to better understand the adopted son of Julius Caesar, who found Rome in brick and left it in marble.

  • The best books on The Odyssey - The Greek Plays by Aeschylus, Euripides & Sophocles
  • The best books on The Odyssey - The Aeneid (Robert Fitzgerald translation) by Virgil
  • The best books on The Odyssey - Collected Ancient Greek Novels by B. P. Reardon (translator)
  • The best books on The Odyssey - Paradise Lost by John Milton
  • The best books on The Odyssey - The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

The best books on The Odyssey, recommended by Emily Wilson

The Odyssey has been constantly rewritten by centuries of writers, but like so much of Greek myth, it's always already open to revising its own narrative. Emily Wilson, Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania and the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English, recommends the best books to read after (or alongside) the Ancient Greek epic, and offers sage wisdom about both translating ancient epics and why everyone can learn from the Odyssey today.