Five Books on the Ancient World
How to get a read on the history of ancient Greece and Rome
Ancient Greece and Rome remain an endlessly fascinating subject, in no small part because of its massive and continuing influence on the modern world. From politics and pop culture to philosophy and architecture, ancient Greece and Rome still pique our interest and provoke our imagination. I’m certainly no exception, what with my own gravitation toward Stoic philosophy—but the nature of our ongoing preoccupation with ancient Greece and Rome can’t be reduced to any one facet of this seemingly endless subject. Indeed, these ancient societies remain as much touchstone for us today as they were for those living in the Middle Ages.
Beyond philosophical tracts and impressive (if now ruined) architecture, the history of ancient Greece and Rome also provide us with compelling stories that have shaped—and continue to shape—how we think about our own times. The fall of Rome’s republic and the rise of its empire, for instance, served as the basis for the preoccupation with the fate of democracy of America’s founding generation as well as a major source of inspiration for Star Wars and its prequel trilogy in particular. Sometimes these narratives of events millennia ago align well with the actual history, other times… less so.
These five books give a good sense of the high dramas and brutal realities often found in ancient Greece and Rome—stories just as intriguing as the versions that have seeped into popular culture over the centuries.
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire: The fall of the Roman Empire has been the subject of inquiry as well as moral and political concern from almost the beginning. Medieval conquerers attempted and failed to recreate it, while the eighteenth-century English historian Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall narrative remains the benchmark account in popular imagination. Historian Kyle Harper takes a different approach, explaining the severe crises that beset Rome from the late second century onward as the result of disease and a changing climate—not moral lassitude, as Gibbon has it—that ultimately made it impossible to maintain the Empire as it was at its height. For an account that focuses more on the way geopolitics, economics, and shifts in Roman governance brought about the end of the Empire in the west, see Peter Heather’s aptly titled The Fall of the Roman Empire.
Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny: As mentioned, the end of Rome’s republic and the rise of its empire have been fodder for everyone from America’s founding generation to George Lucas. But this book by historian Edward J. Watts shows how the republic did itself in, with inflexible politicians like Cato the Younger, ambitious would-be tyrants like Julius Caesar, and vainglorious orators like Cicero coming together to doom the republic and bring about a series of brutal civil wars that made the empire both possible and inevitable. It’s a story of political decay, widespread cynicism and opportunism, and the relentless pursuit of self-interest and -glorification at the expense of the common good that ought to resonate strongly with America’s own present-day political and cultural predicament.
Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy: It’s hard to imagine philosophy (European and otherwise) without Plato; a disciple of Socrates, the Athenian moral gadfly who left behind only the recollections of his students, he refined and defined philosophy as the intellectual discipline we easily recognize today. Robin Waterfield’s biography briskly details Plato’s life and times, weaving together what’s known of his early life in wartime Athens with the development of his philosophy and later, ill-fated involvement in the politics of the Sicilian Greek city-state of Syracuse. He ably describes historical and philosophical debates surrounding Plato and his works, making clear his own views while giving other interpretations a fair shake. For more on Plato’s intervention in Syracuse and how it influenced his own philosophical thought, see the classicist James Romm’s recently published Plato and the Tyrant.
The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra: Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson’s recent account of Hellenistic Egypt certainly delivers on its title and then some. Compared with the attention devoted to the great pyramids of Giza and pharaohs like Ramesses II, Ptolemaic Egypt has gotten short shrift despite its impressive achievements like the Pharos lighthouse and Great Library, both in Alexandria; indeed, Cleopatra, the dynasty’s last and most-remembered monarch, was subject to myths and distortions even in her own day. But with its cultural prowess, geopolitical influence, and hesitant, partial melange of Greek and Egyptian traditions, Wilkinson argues, Ptolemaic Egypt deserves more respect than it’s received from posterity. Ultimately, though, Ptolemaic Egypt couldn’t compete with a rising Rome, and Cleopatra played a bad hand about as well as she could—and still lost.
Rubicon, Dynasty, and Pax: This trilogy by public historian Tom Holland—perhaps best known as co-host of the podcast The Rest is History—vividly and engagingly narrates the collapse of the Roman republic, the rise and reign of the first and often depraved imperial house, and the Empire’s early second century zenith. All the usual suspects are here: Julius Caesar and Augustus as well as emperors like Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Hadrian, each with their own varying degrees of mental disturbance and emotional instability. Holland has a way with words, and that makes these three books worth reading on their own. But he also illustrates the sanguinary nature of the political drama that frequently took place at the heart of the Empire, even at the height of its power.
There are of course many more books to read on ancient Greece and Rome. But it’s useful to go straight to the horse’s mouth, as it were. The Greek Histories, for starters offers a good place to start, with translated selections from Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch.
In a similar vein, the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series gives readers selected translations of famous or otherwise important ancient works from philosophers like Seneca and Aristotle as well as historians like Thucydides and Suetonius. How to Think About War is the most intriguing entry in the series, with classicist Johanna Hanink’s translation of and commentary on Thucydides reminding us that there’s far more subtlety and nuance to his thought about diplomacy and war than modern international relations theorists—particularly self-proclaimed realists—believe.
A number of recent documentaries also delve into the ancient Roman world, with a focus on what recent archaeological excavations can tell us about life and death in the age of the Empire. Lost Treasures of Rome ranges the furthest, from the extremities of the Empire in modern Britain and Jordan to the Colosseum at its very heart. The lost city of Pompeii has seen its fair share of recent documentaries, including National Geographic’s Pompeii: Secrets of the Dead and PBS’s multipart Pompeii: The New Dig.
Finally, ancient Greece and Rome have been part of popular culture for centuries now. William Shakespeare set a number of his plays in ancient Greece and Rome, including my personal favorite Shakespearean work The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In cinema, of course, there’s director Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic Gladiator and its 2024 sequel, while in video games you can encounter the likes of Socrates, Alcibiades, and Aspasia as you violently make your way across Greece during the Peloponnesian War in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.
Great list! Thanks!