The Secret History
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The Secret History
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Narrated by:
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David Timson
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By:
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Procopius
About this listen
Procopius appeared to be a loyal part of the Byzantine establishment, his official writing glorifying the deeds of the Emperor Justinian (d. AD 565). However, he also produced a work that he knew could never be published within the Emperor’s lifetime: The Secret History, a vitriolic indictment of the rule of Justinian and his wife Theodora.
In The Secret History, the general Belisarius is presented as an idiot who is manipulated by his conniving wife Antonina, while the Emperor is depicted as a demon king, a dishonest and autocratic destroyer of established institutions. The Empress Theodora doesn’t escape Procopius’ invective–she is portrayed as the antithesis of the traditional Roman matron: depraved, brutal and bloodthirsty.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,107
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 946
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Story4 out of 5 stars 945
Utopia is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island in this political work written in 1516. Book I of Utopia, a dialogue, presents a perceptive analysis of contemporary social, economic, and moral ills in England. Book II is a narrative describing a country run according to the ideals of the English humanists, where poverty, crime, injustice, and other ills do not exist.
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3 out of 5 stars
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More's unobtainable vision of the ideal society
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-13
By: Sir Thomas More
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The Antiquities of the Jews
- By: Flavius Josephus
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 51 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story5 out of 5 stars 96
Among the many important historical documents from the Classical world of Greece and Rome The Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus is one of the most distinctive and characterful. Josephus (37-c100 CE) set out with the clear purpose of telling the history of the Jews from the creation in Genesis to the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 CE. Born in Jerusalem as Yosef ben Matityahu, he rose to become a leading participant in the First Jewish Revolt (66-73 CE).
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5 out of 5 stars
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Narrator surprisingly good Worth way more than $10
- By Jim Davis on 10-05-21
By: Flavius Josephus
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Dialogues of Plato
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Pat Bottino
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 416
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 312
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 310
The Dialogues of Plato rank with the writings of Aristotle as the most important and influential philosophical works in Western thought. In them Plato cast his teacher Socrates as the central disputant in colloquies that brilliantly probe a vast spectrum of philosophical ideas and issues.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not Complete Dialogues
- By Jill on 08-30-07
By: Plato
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The Age of Reason
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 500
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 431
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 435
Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, published in three parts from 1794, was a best seller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Promoting a creator-God while advocating reason in the place of revelation, Paine’s controversial pamphlet caused his native British audience, fearing the results of the French Revolution, to receive it with more hostility than their American counterparts.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Amazed by the energy, originality & bravery
- By Darwin8u on 10-06-12
By: Thomas Paine
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The Age of Caesar
- Five Roman Lives
- By: Plutarch, James Romm - preface and notes, Pamela Mensch - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names resonate across thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended the Roman republic, their lives still haunt us as examples of how the hunger for personal power can overwhelm collective politics, how the exaltation of the military can corrode civilian authority, and how the best intentions can lead to disastrous consequences. Plutarch renders these history-making lives as flesh-and-blood characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Terrific
- By Michael on 06-13-23
By: Plutarch, and others
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The Jewish War
- By: Flavius Josephus
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 23 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 393
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 351
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 347
In AD 66, nationalist and religious revolutionaries in Judaea led a ferocious revolt of the Jewish people against the authority of mighty Rome, culminating in the greatest upheaval and savagery the world had known up to that time. By the end of the conflict seven years later, over one million Jews had perished and tens of thousands were sold into slavery. Until the Holocaust, it remained the greatest tragedy ever endured by a people. How had this once prosperous region been laid low, and by what process did its fratricidal feuds take it down a slippery slope to utter annihilation? Fortunately for us, there was an eyewitness.
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2 out of 5 stars
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mispronunciations are irritating
- By DR on 01-22-18
By: Flavius Josephus
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Dying Every Day
- Seneca at the Court of Nero
- By: James S. Romm
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story5 out of 5 stars 49
James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding
- By michael bobadilla on 05-04-23
By: James S. Romm
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Common Sense
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Adrian Cronauer
- Length: 1 hr and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 223
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
This pamphlet, first published in 1776, set in print the word every American was thinking about, but none dared say: independence! It was published anonymously in New York, selling 120,000 copies in the first 3 months and half a million in that same year. Its author, Thomas Paine, wrote in a language that could be understood by any reasonably literate colonist. But more important than it being so well received, is that it captured the American colonists' imaginations and was a primary catalyst to the independence movement in the United States. Noted American historian Bernard Bailyn called it "the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant ever written in the English language."
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4 out of 5 stars
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revolutionary ideas for sure
- By reggie p on 08-20-03
By: Thomas Paine
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The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages
- By: Ferdinand Lot
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Ferdinand Lot (1866-1952) was one of the great historians of his generation, and the transition from Roman to Medieval civilization was a process that fascinated him most of his life. Rather than placing the emphasis for Rome’s fall on purely political or military reasons, Lot put forth multiple explanations for the birth of the Middle Ages which embrace not only politics and war, but linguistic, geographic, cultural, social and economic factors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Rome "too vast, too complicated and too cunning"
- By Philo on 11-26-15
By: Ferdinand Lot
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A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- By: Bartolome de las Casas
- Narrated by: Jason McCoy
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies is the story of the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas, who came to the Americas in the 16th century. Immediately he was struck by the inhumane ways in which the native peoples were treated by the European explorers and conquerors, Las Casas went on to be a leading opponent of slavery, torture, and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History written from who witnessed
- By Leonardo on 07-09-20
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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
- By: Charles MacKay
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4 out of 5 stars 102
Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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People don't change
- By J. on 07-05-16
By: Charles MacKay
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The Assassination of Julius Caesar
- A People's History of Ancient Rome
- By: Michael Parenti
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story5 out of 5 stars 80
Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility - the one percent of the population who controlled 99 percent of the empire's wealth. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti recounts this period, spanning the years 100 to 33 BC, from the perspective of the Roman people. In doing so, he presents a provocative, trenchantly researched narrative of popular resistance against a powerful elite.
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5 out of 5 stars
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another side to Roman history
- By Darksnovia on 04-16-22
By: Michael Parenti
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The Peloponnesian War
- By: Thucydides
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 26 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 514
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 450
Historians universally agree that Thucydides was the greatest historian who has ever lived, and that his story of the Peloponnesian conflict is a marvel of forensic science and fine literature. That such a triumph of intellectual accomplishment was created at the end of the fifth century B.C. in Greece is, perhaps, not so surprising, given the number of original geniuses we find in that period. But that such an historical work would also be simultaneously acknowledged as a work of great literature and a penetrating ethical evaluation of humanity is one of the miracles of ancient history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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You better know the events before listening
- By David A. Montalvo on 05-25-16
By: Thucydides
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Nero
- Matricide, Music, and Murder in Imperial Rome
- By: Anthony Everitt, Roddy Ashworth
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
The Roman emperor Nero’s name has long been a byword for cruelty, decadence, and despotism. As the stories go, he set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. He then cleared the charred ruins and built a vast palace. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. But these stories, left behind by contemporary historians who hated him, are hardly the full picture, and in this nuanced biography, celebrated historian Anthony Everitt and investigative journalist Roddy Ashworth reveal the contradictions inherent in Nero
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5 out of 5 stars
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An amazing 360 degree portrait
- By Cooper A Day on 01-01-23
By: Anthony Everitt, and others