Political Speeches
10 best books like Political Speeches (Marcus Tullius Cicero): Politics, The Twelve Caesars, The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, The Rise of the Roman Empire, The History of Rome, Books 21-30: The War with Hannibal, Four Comedies, Four Tragedies and Octavia (Thyestes, Phaedra, Troades, Oedipus, Octavia), The History of Rome, Books 6-10: Rome and Italy, The Jewish War, Roman Lives: A Selection of Eight Lives (Aemilius Paulus, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Grachus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Marc Anthony)
| Author | Aristotle |
| ISBN | 0486414248 |
What is the relationship of the individual to the state? What is the ideal state, and how can it bring about the most desirable life for its citizens? What sort of education should it provide? What is the purpose of amassing wealth? These are some of the questions Aristotle attempts to answer in one of the...
| Author | Suetonius |
| ISBN | 0140449213 |
As private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, Suetonius gained access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eye-witness accounts) to produce one of the most colorful biographical works in history. The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded...
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
| Author | Aeschylus |
| ISBN | 0140443339 |
Alternate cover edition can be found here, here, here, here
In the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos.
Moving from darkness to light, from...
| Author | Polybius |
| ISBN | 0140443622 |
Polybius, himself a Greek and an active contemporary participant in political relations with Rome, wrote the forty books of his Universal History primarily to chronicle and account for the Roman conquest of Greece between 200 and 167 B.C. He saw that Mediterranean history, under Rome's influence,...
It is Livy (59 BC-AD 17) who re-creates for us in vivid detail the terrible events of the Second Punic War, down to the Battle of Zama (202 BC). It is Livy who shows us the immense armies of Hannibal, elephants and all, crossing the Alps (still regarded as a near-miraculous feat by historians), the panic...
| Author | Plautus |
| ISBN | 0192838962 |
Plautus was the single greatest influence on Western comedy. In fact, Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Moliere's the Miser are two subsequent classics directly based on Plautine originals. Plautus himself borrowed from the Greeks, but his jokes, rapid dialogue, bawdy humor, and irreverent characterizations...
| Author | Seneca |
| ISBN | 0140441743 |
Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca's plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and often bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, while Phaedra...
Books VI-X of Livy's monumental work trace Rome's fortunes from its near collapse after defeat by the Gauls in 386 bc to its emergence, in a matter of decades, as the premier power in Italy, having conquered the city-state of Samnium in 293 bc. In this fascinating history, events are described not simply...
| Author | Flavius Josephus |
| ISBN | 0140444203 |
Josephus’ account of a war marked by treachery and atrocity is a superbly detailed and evocative record of the Jewish rebellion against Rome between AD 66 and 70. Originally a rebel leader, Josephus changed sides after he was captured to become a Rome-appointed negotiator, and so was uniquely placed...
'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.'
In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and...
A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir
| Author | Lev Golinkin |
| ISBN | 0385537778 |
A compelling story of two intertwined journeys: a Jewish refugee family fleeing persecution and a young man seeking to reclaim a shattered past. In the twilight of the Cold War (the late 1980s), nine-year old Lev Golinkin and his family cross the Soviet border with only ten suitcases, $600, and the vague...
