Ancient

A New York Times-bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time....

Julius Caesar is one of the most famous figures of the ancient Roman world. A skillful general and leading politician of the late Roman Republic, he secured a 10-year proconsular command in the province of Gaul, during which he accumulated both wealth and power....

Aurelian saved the Roman Empire from foreign invasion and collapse, earning him the title Restorer of the World from a grateful Senate. This is his story as restorer of the world....

Discover the secrets of history’s most formidable fighters in “Preparing for WAR: The Training of History’s Top Warriors” by James Pieratt.

In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style....

Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world.

This book is a narrative history of a dozen years of turmoil that begins with Rome's millennium celebrations of 248 CE and ends with the capture of the emperor Valerian by the Persians in 260....

The myths surrounding Sparta are as old as the city itself. Even in antiquity, Sparta was a unique society, considered an enigma. The Spartans' often bizarre rules and practices have the capacity to horrify as much they do to fascinate us today....

The last and longest war of classical antiquity was fought in the early seventh century. It was ideologically charged and fought along the full length of the Persian-Roman frontier, drawing in all the available resources and great powers of the steppe world....

A riveting account of ancient Rome's imperial bodyguard, the select band of soldiers who wielded the power to make - or destroy - the emperors they served....

James Lacey provides a comprehensive, persuasive, and engaging account of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire....

Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great were two of the greatest generals Rome had ever produced....

In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. Listen to learn more....

This compelling reference presents the history of ancient Greece - the culture that brought us democracy, the Olympics, Socrates, and Alexander the Great....

Hadrian's Wall is the largest and one of the most enigmatic historical monuments in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running seventy-three miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least twenty-six miles down the Cumbrian coast....

In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors, their wives, and children personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman emperor in 476. That leader became Theoderic the Great (454-526)....

Since the reign of Emperor Tiberius, an uneasy peace has existed along the Danube frontier between the various Sarmatian tribal kingdoms to the north and the Roman Empire to the south.

In the pantheon of ancient men of letters, none hold a more venerated position than the Roman historian, Tacitus....

Shortly before his death in 1645, the undefeated swordsman Miyamoto Musashi retreated to a cave to live as a hermit. There he wrote five scrolls describing the "true principles" required for victory in the martial arts and on the battlefield....

A Noble Ruin delivers a complex and captivating portrait of Mark Antony that offers a fresh perspective on the fall of the Roman Republic.

Who was Rome's greatest general, statesman, and nation-builder: Caesar or Pompey?

From classicist James Romm comes a thrilling deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes - and the saga of the greatest military corps of the age, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers....

The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China presents us with an Eastern tradition of strategic thought....

"Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon" throws down a historical gauntlet. Author B.H. Liddell Hart argues that Roman general Scipio, famed for defeating Hannibal, outshines even the mighty Napoleon. Published in 1927, the book dives deep into their strategies, campaigns, and leadership styles.

The Gallic War is Julius Caesar's autobiographical diary of the wars in what is now France, Belgium, and parts of Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, in which he describes the battles that took place from 58 to 51 BCE when he fought the Germanic and Celtic peoples....