Ancient

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

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....

A stunning portrait of Rome’s glory days, this is the definitive history of the Pax Romana—an ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness....

By 330 B.C.E., Alexander the Great had reached the pinnacle of success. Or so it seemed. He had defeated the Persian ruler Darius III and seized the capital city of Persepolis. His exhausted and traumatized soldiers were ready to return home to Macedonia.

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....

Telling the story of a man who stood against the overwhelming power of the mighty Roman empire, Hannibal is the biography of a man who, against all odds, dared to change the course of history....

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)....

The Achaemenid Persian kings ruled over the largest empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the steppes of Asia and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. In Persians, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the epic story of this dynasty and the world it ruled....

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

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....

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....

Tacitus is most famous for his amazing descriptions of the reign of Nero, one of the most ruthless and sadistic monarchs of all time....

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

From Don Hollway, author of The Last Viking, comes a dramatic retelling of the story of the final years of the Western Roman Empire and the downfall of Rome itself from the perspective of the Roman general Stilicho and Alaric, king of the Visigoths....

Award-winning historian of ancient Rome Adrian Goldsworthy presents a concise and comprehensive history of the fighting forces that created the Roman Empire....

In 89 A.D., following a failed insurrection by the governor of Upper Germania, the disgraced Legio XXI Rapax is dispatched to Pannonia, on the River Danube.

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.

Hold the glory—and infamy—of ancient Rome in the palm of your hand in this extraordinary and accessible story of history’s greatest superpower, as told through humanity’s most universal object: the coin.

A new age has dawned for Rome. Following the brief reign of Emperor Nerva, Marcus Ulpius Trajan inherits the mantle of Caesar. A revered general and statesman, the senate a people of Rome greet his rise with an optimism not seen since the reign of Vespasian.

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....

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....

Mastering the West offers a thoroughly engrossing narrative of this century of battle in the western Mediterranean, while treating a full range of themes....

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....

By the Spear offers an exhilarating military narrative of the reigns of these two larger-than-life figures in one volume....

The leading scholars behind The Greek Plays present a collection of the best translations of the foremost Greek historians, presenting a sweeping history of ancient Greece as recorded by its first chroniclers....