The Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline
10 best books like The Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline (Sallust): The Agricola and The Germania, History of the Peloponnesian War, The Twelve Caesars, The Annals of Imperial Rome, The Secret History, A History of My Times, The Civil Wars, The Campaigns of Alexander, The Rise of the Roman Empire, The Sixteen Satires
| Author | Tacitus |
| ISBN | 0140442413 |
The Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agricola - the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and respected father-in-law - and the first detailed account of Britain that has come down to us. It offers fascinating descriptions of the geography, climate and peoples of the country,...
History of the Peloponnesian War
| Author | Thucydides |
| ISBN | 0140440399 |
Written four hundred years before the birth of Christ, this detailed contemporary account of the long life-and-death struggle between Athens and Sparta stands an excellent chance of fulfilling its author's ambitious claim. Thucydides himself (c.460-400 BC) was an Athenian and achieved the rank...
| 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 Annals of Imperial Rome
In "The Annals of Imperial Rome", his last and greatest work, Tacitus (AD c.55-c.117) covers the period from AD 14, just before the death of Augustus, to the death of Nero in AD 68. Not all the passages have survived, but in those that have the depth and diversity of genius are manifest. From a vicious, vituperative...
| Author | Procopius |
| ISBN | 0140441824 |
Having dutifully written the official war history of Justinian's reign, Procopius turned round and revealed in The Secret History the other faces of the leading men and women of Byzantium in the sixth century. Justinian, the great law-giver, appears as a hateful tyrant, wedded to an ex-prostitute,...
| Author | Xenophon |
| ISBN | 0140441751 |
Thucydides' magisterial history told of the unhappy conflict of Greeks against the Greeks in the Peloponnesian War, but his narrative broke off in 411 B.C., seven years before the end, and Greeks were to continue fighting one another for many more years. Xenophon continues the account to 362 B.C. These...
| Author | Appian |
| ISBN | 0140445099 |
Appian's Civil Wars offers a masterly account of the turbulent epoch from the time of Tiberius Gracchus (133 BC) to the tremendous conflicts which followed the murder of Julius Caesar. For the events between 133 and 70 BC he is the only surviving continuous narrative source. The subsequent books vividly...
| Author | Arrian |
| ISBN | 0140442537 |
'His passion was for glory only, and in that he was insatiable'Although written over four hundred years after Alexander’s death, Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander is the most reliable account of the man and his achievements we have. Arrian’s own experience as a military commander gave him unique...
| 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,...
| Author | Juvenal |
| ISBN | 0140447040 |
Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor, and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and...
ALL MATTER?
NEVER MIND!
-Bertrand Russell’s Grandmother
(Mocking his Materialist Philosophy)
When I was in my late teens I had a stunning Lucretian prise de conscience that utterly knocked the wind out of my youthful sails. It seemed the overwhelming answer to Eliot’s...
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 | Gaius Julius Caesar |
| ISBN | 0140441875 |
A military leader of legendary genius, Caesar was also a great writer, recording the events of his life with incomparable immediacy and power. The Civil War is a tense and gripping depiction of his struggle with Pompey over the leadership of Republican Rome - a conflict that spanned the entire Roman...
| Author | Tacitus |
| ISBN | 0140441506 |
In AD 68, Nero's suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. The following year was one of drama and danger, with four emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian—emerging in succession. Based on authoritative sources, The Histories vividly recounts the details of the "long...
| 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...
The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus
| Author | Cassius Dio |
| ISBN | 0140444483 |
Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome (27 BC-AD 14), brought peace and prosperity to his city after decades of savage civil war. This selection from Cassius Dio's Roman History gives the fullest description of that long struggle and ultimate triumph - detailing the brutal battles and political...
