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....

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

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....

The Art of War is a renowned ancient Chinese military treatise written by Sun Tzu, a military strategist and philosopher. Composed around the fifth...

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....

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.

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 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....

The Spartans of ancient Greece were a powerful and unique people, radically different from any civilization before or since....

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.

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

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....

Get to know one of history’s most impressive generals from the political and military conflicts that defined his adolescence to the battles that made him famous. These 15 lectures will paint a portrait of not only Hannibal, but also his enemies and allies....

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....

For twelve years a disgraceful pall has hung over the Roman Empire. Trouble along the Germanic frontier forced an abrupt end to Emperor Domitian’s war against King Decebalus of Dacia.

"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.

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....

Until the publication of this captivating biography, no such volume on Trajan's life has been tailored to the general listener. The unique book illuminates a neglected period of ancient Roman history....

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

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....

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....

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

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

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

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.