Ancient History Books

How accurate is what we think we know about the Romans? Tom Holland, the author of Rubicon, tells us about the exercise of power, the staging of ceremony and the influence of religion in ancient Rome.   If you've enjoyed these recommendations you might be interested in our interview on the best books on Ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece's legacy can be seen all around us, including in our political system — but many of us don't know that much about it. Fortunately, we have someone who has devoted his life to studying this remote time and place to give us a reading list. Chris Pelling, Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, recommends his top five books on Ancient Greece.

Cambridge Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson discusses his favourite works on Ancient Egypt — from the first book he bought on the subject to an authoritative coffee-table tome.

Caesar, Cicero, Achilles, Socrates, Plato: millennia later, we still talk about them. Olly Murphy, classics teacher at Wycombe Abbey, one of England's top girls' schools, recommends books and explains why classics remains one of the most exciting subjects for teenagers to study.

On August 24th, 79 AD Vesuvius, a volcano overlooking the Bay of Naples, erupted. The surrounding towns, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, would eventually be covered in ash and preserved for centuries, rediscovered in the 19th century and still revealing new information about the ancient world today.

Boudica was an Iron Age queen who led her people into rebellion against Roman rule in the province of Britannia. She was defeated, but only after she had burned several towns, including London, to the ground. Here Richard Hingley, Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, explains how to sift the truth from the myth, and why Boudica has remained an enduring source of fascination down the centuries.

Christianity has been profoundly influenced by Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), but the fifth-century North African bishop has impacted almost every area of western thought: philosophy, theology, political theory, linguistics, and rhetoric. His Confessions is one of the most recommended titles on Five Books, but is it really the first autobiography? Professor Catherine Conybeare introduces us to the life, thought, and personality of this controversial yet brilliant figure. She picks the best books to learn more about St. Augustine and explores how he has been unfairly maligned.

In telling the story of the Celts, it's challenging to separate history from legend, says writer and historian Simon Young. And yet, we do have evidence of cities burned to the ground and decapitated statues, as well as books written at the time. He takes us to the land of Boudicca, King Arthur and Merlin, and explains why Irish monks took to the sea to find deserted islands.

Reading the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt reveals much about the worldview of a civilisation that rose to prominence 5000 years ago and flourished for thousands of years. Here, intellectual historian Diane Greco Josefowicz—whose book, The Riddle of the Rosetta, co-written with Jed Buchwald, tells the story of how the meaning of the hieroglyphs was deciphered in 19th century France—recommends the best books to learn more about hieroglyphics.

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.