Greek Roman History

Historians and economists commonly cite natural disasters and foreign invasions to explain cultural collapses. The problem is, human families have been suffering and overcoming disasters for thousands of years. Humans cover most of the earth; they have learned to live on polar ice and in arid deserts. They have adapted to tropical islands and rain forests. Humans live literally everywhere. And wherever humans wander, they create cultures and civilizations. Civilizations fall apart when human economies and cultures collapse. The question is--what forces, over long, long time periods, divide ...

In virtually all fields of human endeavor, Athens was so much at the forefront of dynamism and innovation that the products of its most brilliant minds remain not only influential, but entirely relevant to this day. In the field of medicine, the great physician Hippocrates not only advanced the practical knowledge of human anatomy and care-giving, but changed the entire face of the medical profession.

The rise of Rome is one of the great stories of world history and fortunately we have a reliable and at times an eyewitness account, from the Greek historian Polybius of Megalopolis. Polybius reports on the main confrontations with the authority of a man who was present at many events and also visited historic sites of importance to ensure his accounts of the past were accurate.

The historians of ancient Greece were pioneers of a new literary craft; their work stands among the world’s most enduring and important legacies and forms the foundation of a major modern discipline. This easy-to-follow edition includes new and newly revised translations of selections from Herodotus - often called the “father of history” - Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch, the four greatest Greek innovators of historical narrative. Here the listener will find their most important, and most widely taught, passages collected in a single volume.

On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.

Unlock the Secrets of Three Great Civilizations This captivating 3-in-1 guide delivers history like never before. It brings Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome roaring to life for today’s teens. Three manuscripts in one book: Ancient Egypt for Teens: An Enthralling Guide to Important Events and Rulers in Egyptian History Ancient Greece for Teens: An Enthralling Guide to Major Events and Figures in Greek History Ancient Rome for Teens: An Enthralling Guide to the Roman Republic and Empire Whether you're obsessed with myths, fascinated by pharaohs, or just love a good plot twist from the past, ...

From the city of Pompeii - frozen in time by volcanic ash and lava - to the Coliseum’s famed gladiators - treated like rock stars - ancient Rome had it all: Gods and Goddesses, infamous emperors, crippling warfare, and beautiful art. Spartacus, the famous gladiator and slave, led a revolt against a tyrannical government. Conspirators violently murdered Emperor Julius Caesar. Virgil wrote epic poetry, and Jesus of Nazareth was proclaimed the messiah.

Mystery cults are one of the most intriguing areas of Greek and Roman religion. In the nocturnal mysteries at Eleusis, participants dramatically reenacted the story of Demeter's loss and recovery of her daughter Persephone; in the Bacchic cult, bands of women ran wild in the Greek countryside to honor Dionysus; in the mysteries of Mithras, men came to understand the nature of the universe and their place within it through frightening initiation ceremonies and astrological teachings.

From the foundation of the Roman Monarchy to the whispered end of the Western Roman Empire, here’s your chance to learn all the key events of the intricate dance of power, passion, and prophecy that shaped the rise, decline, and fall of Rome. The Wolves of Mars is your key to over 1,200 years of Roman social, political, economic, military, and intellectual history.

Acclaimed historian and best-selling author Paul Johnson’s books have been translated into dozens of languages. In Socrates: A Man for Our Times, Johnson draws from little-known resources to construct a fascinating account of one of history’s greatest thinkers. Socrates transcended class limitations in Athens during the fifth century B.C. to develop ideas that still shape the way we think about the human body and soul, including the workings of the human mind.

This famous work by Lucretius is a masterpiece of didactic poetry, and it still stands today as the finest exposition of Epicurean philosophy ever written. The poem was produced in the middle of first century B.C., a period that was to witness a flowering of Latin literature unequaled for beauty and intellectual power in subsequent ages. The Latin title, De Rerum Natura, translates literally to On the Nature of Things and is meant to impress the reader with the breadth and depth of Epicurean philosophy.

Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.

Meditations is former US President Bill Clinton's favorite book. This audio consists of a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor AD 161-180, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy.

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme.

McKinley introduces his readers to over thirty authors of the ancient classics, illuminating who they were, the times they lived in, and their works that have come down to us through the millennia. In the process, we are introduced to the world-changing historical events of antiquity from the Greco-Persian Wars to the centuries of conquests that built the Roman Empire. Rather than reading second-hand accounts, we share the experience through the words of the men who lived and wrote this history, from Thucydides to Julius Caesar. We read multiple original accounts of decisive events such as ...

Ancient Greece first coined the concept of democracy, yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker - from Plato and Aristotle onward - was ambivalent toward or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: The elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat. In ancient Greece, there can be traced not only the rudiments of modern democratic society but the entire Western tradition of antidemocratic thought.

The ancient Greeks gave us so much that we still use today; mythological stories we continue to study in schools and colleges and the Olympics are just a few. While Greece is just a small European country today, it covered parts of today’s North Africa and Iran - and had a society much like ours. Greeks enjoyed great food, music, and reading. Society was governed a lot like modern times, and its people were farmers, politicians, artists, and inventors! Prepare to be amazed about how this ancient society looks so much like our own - and why.

The Trial and the Death of Socrates remains a powerful document not least because it gives a first-hand account of the end of one of the greatest figures in history.

In Apology, Socrates defends himself before the Athenian court against charges of corrupting youth. Phaedo is the account by a young man of the actual last words and moments of Socrates.

Michel Foucault takes us into the first two centuries of our own era, into the Golden Age of Rome, to reveal a subtle but decisive break from the classical Greek vision of sexual pleasure. He skillfully explores the whole corpus of moral reflection among philosophers (Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca) and physicians of the era, and uncovers an increasing mistrust of pleasure and growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences.

Very few of the ancient empires and nations were able to challenge the Romans, who were famous for their military might. Even fewer were able to make them shiver just by mentioning their name. In fact, only one enemy of Rome managed to engrave such fear into their bones. That was Carthage, sometimes called the Carthaginian Empire. It was a formidable state that stretched across northern Africa, from Algeria and Tunisia to the shores of Morocco and southern Spain.