Category: History

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The plan was simple: set fire to Rome, massacre the rich, loot their property, and take over the government. It was up to Cicero—a bookish orator—to save the republic. Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cato: they all have their parts to play, and the masterful pen of Gaston Boissier makes these outsized characters live once more.

Gaston Boissier, a member of the Académie française, was a brilliant historian who specialized in making ancient Rome live again for modern readers. This new translation brings one of his last and most entertaining works to English-speaking readers for the first time.

Find The Catiline Conspiracy in paperback at Amazon. Also available in a durable casebound hardcover edition.

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One of the most valuable histories of late antiquity is finally available in an economical and useful English edition, with the standard chapter numbers, chronological headings, and helpful and entertaining supplements.

What was it like to be a pagan after the final Christianization of the Empire? For Zosimus, it was clear that Rome had declined and Roman glory was gone—and it was all the Christians’ fault. The Romans had risen to power because they had the favor of the gods; Roman power collapsed because the gods justly withdrew their favor. Zosimus tells us at the beginning that this will be the theme of his history, and he sticks to it.

For much of the history recorded here, Zosimus is the only counterweight to the Christian historians. He is also an opinionated and entertaining companion, and history-lovers will be glad to make his acquaintance in a vigorous English translation.

In this new edition, we have corrected many errors in the 1814 translation (most of them probably the fault of the printer) and added chronological headings and the chapter numbers that have become a standard reference system for Zosimus. We also include the summaries of Zosimus’ now-lost sources by the great Byzantine scholar Photius, and a delightful defense of Zosimus by his Renaissance editor Johannes Leunclavius.

Find The New History of Zosimus at Amazon.

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A collection of stories, legends, and snappy comebacks preserved for us by one of the most entertaining companions among ancient writers. It’s a long and rambling conversation with an ancient Roman whose mind is full of trivia, and who knows how to make those trivia as interesting to us as they are to him.

I am told there is a Law at Thebes, which commands Artificers, both Painters and Potters, to make the Figures as good as may be. This Law menaceth to those who mould or paint them not well a pecuniary mulct.

Socrates being very old fell sick; and one asking him how he did, “Well, saith he, both waies: for if I live longer, I shall have more Emulators; if I die, more Praisers.”

I have heard of a woman that could sound a Trumpet, which art was her way of living, by name Aglais, daughter of Megacles; she wore a Periwig and a plume on her head, as Posidippus relates. At one meal she did devour twelve pounds of flesh, and four Chœnixes of bread, and drank a Congius of wine.

Which of these two was the better General, Demetrius Poliorcetes, or Timotheus the Athenian? I will tell you the nature of both, and then you may judge which deserves to be preferred. Demetrius by force and avarice, and oppressing many, and committing injustice, took Cities, battering their Walls with Engines, and undermining them: but Timotheus by discourse, persuading them it was most to their advantage to obey the Athenians.

The Various History of Aelian, at Amazon.com.

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A book about Euripides? Yes, but it’s much more than that. Far from a dry academic study, this is one of the most riveting books you’ll ever read. With remarkable insight, Gilbert Murray traces the history of all our most important human ideas—democracy, patriotism, war, hate, forgiveness—and shows how Euripides filters them all through his towering genius. This is a book you’ll read again and again, a book you’ll quote to friends, a book you’ll keep with you for the rest of your life.

When this book was first published more than a century ago, the author wrote that “quite apart from his disputed greatness as a poet and thinker, apart from his amazing and perhaps unparalleled success as a practical playwright, Euripides is a figure of high significance in the history of humanity and of special interest to our own generation.”

That’s still true today. Yes, it’s a book about Euripides. But it’s also a book about everything it means to be human. Even if you have never read Euripides, or never liked him when you did read him, you will still probably enjoy this book. You may end up loving this book. Gilbert Murray had one of those great minds that can effortlessly find the universal in the particular, and here are just a few of the remarkable thoughts you’ll find here:

Every man who possesses real vitality can be seen as the resultant of two forces. He is first the child of a particular age, society, convention; of what we may call in one word a tradition. He is secondly, in one degree or another, a rebel against that tradition. And the best traditions make the best rebels. (Chapter 1.)

In every contest that goes on between Intelligence and Stupidity, between Enlightenment and Obscurantism, the powers of the dark have this immense advantage: they never understand their opponents, and conse­quently represent them as always wrong, always wicked, whereas the intelligent party generally makes an effort to understand the stupid and to sympathize with anything that is good or fine in their attitude. (Chapter 2.)

We must distinguish carefully between the two notions, Enlightenment and Democracy. They happen to have gone together in two or three of the greatest periods of human progress and we are apt to regard them as somehow necessarily allied. But they are not. (Chapter 5.)

Irony is the mood of one who has some strong emotion within but will not quite trust himself on the flood of it. And romance is largely the mood of one turning away from realities that disgust him. (Chapter 5.)

After all they were a democracy; and, as Thucydides fully recognizes, a great mass of men, if it does commit infamies, likes first to be drugged and stimulated with lies: it seldom, like the wicked man in Aristotle’s Ethics, “calmly sins.” (Chapter 5.)

Euripides and His Age at Amazon.com.