Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent and ambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is the fate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteen centuries - its rulers, wars and society, and the events that led to its disastrous collapse. Here, in volumes three and four, Gibbon vividly recounts the waves of barbarian invaders under commanders...

The world's first great narrative history, Herodotus' Histories vividly describes how the Greeks--few in number, poor, and disunited--managed to repulse a massive invasion by the powerful Persian army in the fifth century B.C. This amazing upset victory changed the course of Western civilization, as the cities that led the resistance--Athens and Sparta--became the two major powers on the Greek mainland.

Bestselling author Norman Cantor delivers this compact but magisterial survey of the ancient world-from the birth of Sumerian civilization around 3500 B. C. in the Tigris-Euphrates valley (present-day Iraq) to the fall of the Roman Empire in A. D. 476. In Antiquity, Cantor covers such subjects as Classical Greece, Judaism, the founding of Christianity, and the triumph and decline of Rome. In this fascinating and comprehensive analysis, the author...

Written by the renowned authority on ancient ships and seafaring Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners has long served the needs of all who are interested in the sea, from the casual reader to the professional historian. This completely revised edition takes into account the fresh information that has appeared since the book was first published in 1959, especially that from archaeology's newest branch, marine archaeology. Casson does what no other author...

"The first female translator of the epic into English in over sixty years, Stephanie McCarter addresses accuracy in translation and its representation of women, gendered dynamics of power, and sexual violence in Ovid's classic. Ovid's Metamorphoses is an epic poem, but one that upturns almost every convention. There is no main hero, no central conflict, and no sustained objective. What it is about (power, defiance, art, love, abuse, grief, rape, war,...

Ancient cities came to life over 5,000 years ago. Readers will journey to the civilizations that set the base of history, exploring why they formed and how they functioned. Fascinating facts and vivid illustrations make this a page-turner for any young reader.

The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life--and grappling with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, "life through craft."...

"From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years. What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book--against a background of today's "sculpture wars"--Mary Beard tells the story of how for more...

In 401 BCE, Cyrus the Younger hired ten thousand Greek mercenaries to help him seize the throne of the Persian Empire from his brother Artaxerxes II. Xenophon was one of the Greek mercenaries present at this expedition and eventually he documented his experience in writing as Anabasis. Anabasis is now a record of one of the greatest adventures in human history and an invaluable document on the world of Classical Greece.

Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India--the stories...