We’re as much the products of the books we read as we are of the times we live in. The 20 books in the list below certainly shaped me: I owe them my career as a classicist, and the seven books I’ve written so far.
While writers of fiction are praised for capturing the essence of their age, historians are normally expected to resurrect the past as it was, without allowing their view to be coloured by the present. Most will tell you that this is impossible. Some books in this list are, like their authors, products of their time, but they’re still worthy in my estimation of their place.
It’s no easy feat for one author to rank, in order, the books of 20 others. Many of these writers are still alive, …
We’re as much the products of the books we read as we are of the times we live in. The 20 books in the list below certainly shaped me: I owe them my career as a classicist, and the seven books I’ve written so far.
While writers of fiction are praised for capturing the essence of their age, historians are normally expected to resurrect the past as it was, without allowing their view to be coloured by the present. Most will tell you that this is impossible. Some books in this list are, like their authors, products of their time, but they’re still worthy in my estimation of their place.
It’s no easy feat for one author to rank, in order, the books of 20 others. Many of these writers are still alive, too. Think of me at the next Classics conference…
20. Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks (1957)
by Simone Weil
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We don’t tend to associate Simone Weil with classical antiquity, but the French philosopher read Greek fluently, and brought a unique perspective to the sources. In this slim volume, she translated passages from Homer, Sophocles, Plato and others, and used them as the basis for an unusual, subtle commentary on the connections between paganism and Christianity.
19. Pax Romana (2016)
by Adrian Goldsworthy
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“They create a desert and call it peace,” said a Caledonian chieftain of the Romans. But the latter were not, according to Adrian Goldsworthy, inherently expansionist. Goldsworthy may not be the flashiest ancient historian working today, but he’s quietly prolific: he has written on Greece, Persia, Carthage and Hadrian’s Wall. His book on the “Pax Romana”, the two centuries of imperial stability that began with Augustus’s rule, is his most wide-ranging. He surveys the impact of Rome’s policy on its “troublesome” territories, and shows that *pax *was sometimes, but not always, a euphemism for imperial conquest.
18. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903)
by Jane Harrison
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Don’t be put off by the title (“prolegomena” is Greek for a preface or introduction); this book is highly readable and frequently witty. A pioneering Cambridge classicist, Jane Harrison was fascinated by religious experience in ancient Greece. The Homeric epics, the oldest surviving works of literature in the Western world, struck her as decidedly modern. She believed that if we wish to understand ancient religion, we need to delve deeper through history and archaeology. And that’s precisely what she does across the 700 pages of this book, which she referred to, affectionately, as her “fat and comely one”.
17. The Ancient Near East c3000–300 BC (1995)
by Amélie Kuhrt
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This two-volume work is a staple for those seeking to learn about the ancient world beyond the borders of Greece and Rome. An introduction and a source-book to the histories of Turkey and Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant – what scholars used to call the “Near East”, though that label has become archaic – it’s the sort of guide into which you can dip over the years, or pull out for reference, without feeling guilty for not reading it cover-to-cover.
16. The Ancient Economy (1973)
by Moses Finley
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Moses Finley relocated to England from America in 1954 after he was accused of being a Communist. But he returned in 1972 to deliver a lecture series at Berkeley on the subject of the ancient economy, and those lectures formed the basis of this book. Finley’s theory was that while our word “economics” derives from ancient Greek, there was no real concept of “the economy” in antiquity. He argued that commerce was instead status-driven and focused on self-sufficiency. His Marxist leanings may be obvious, but Finley unwittingly laid down the gauntlet: practically everything that has since been written about the ancient economy leads back to this book.
15. Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (1935)
by Arthur O Lovejoy and George Boas
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I bought a copy of this book as a student and read it obsessively. It examines how ideas of primitivism were rejected or idealised by the ancients in their endless quest for a golden age or lost paradise. It’s as much a book about civilisation and progress as it is a history written by the ancients. Some of the language is now dated – there are plenty of “savage peoples” – but the book is still fascinating.
14. New Men in the Roman Senate (1971)
by TP Wiseman
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TP Wiseman, professor emeritus at Exeter, was once rumoured to have been the inspiration for his former student JK Rowling’s Dumbledore – an association he has denied. Either way, he’s one of the most daring classicists in the academy today. Aged 85, he continues to take leaps that few of his juniors would countenance. The result has been a series of electrifying and absorbing works of scholarship. In New Men in the Roman Senate, Wiseman uses his characteristic sleuthing to identify and explore the *novi homines *– men who entered the Senate without the aid of nepotism – across the first century BC and beyond. Some prior knowledge of Rome’s political system is required.
13. Millennium (2008)
by Tom Holland
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Tom Holland’s Rubicon, about the death of the Roman Republic, was published in 2003, when I was a teenager. I devoured it. By the time *Millennium *came out five years later, I was at university, and so laden with Classics reading lists that the prospect of a book covering the period post-AD 500 was immediately enticing. As we’d just entered a new millennium of our own, the fears of those who approached the year 1000 were familiar. Would the world end or would it expand? Was the end of religion nigh? I’m admittedly stretching the limits of “ancient history” with this book, but I’ll allow it on the grounds that the legacy of Rome and its fall is central to its argument.
12. In Search of the Trojan War (1985)
by Michael Wood
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One of the first documentary series I remember watching as a child was Michael Wood’s seminal exploration of the truth behind the Trojan War. (It must have been a repeat: the original aired in 1985, before I was born.) When I discovered the accompanying book, some years later, I was delighted to find that it was far more than a mere tie-in. Wood writes so engagingly that you feel as though you’re excavating with him. He’s encouraged by the various bits of archaeological evidence for a real war – slingshots, arrowheads, burned masonry – and he interrogates the timelines enthusiastically without stretching the facts.
11. Alexander the Great (1973)
by Robin Lane Fox
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Oliver Stone’s 2004 film Alexander was inspired in part by this book, a fact that contributed to Lane Fox’s legendary status at Oxford in the 2000s. A copy of the revised paperback landed in my Christmas stocking in 2004; I must since have read it thrice over. The narrative leads you through the life of the ambitious Macedonian leader with immediacy and vim. The passages on the burning of Xerxes’s palace at Persepolis are imprinted on my memory.
10. SPQR (2015)
by Mary Beard
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This was an instant classic, earning a place in the bestseller lists and on thousands of readers’ shelves. What makes *SPQR *such a compelling read is its enormous scope and Mary Beard’s no-nonsense style. Running from the legendary early kings to the height of the empire, she covers the key stages in Rome’s development without being tediously exhaustive. Catiline, who conspired to overthrow the Roman government in 63 BC, casts a long shadow. Was he, Beard asks, a “far-sighted radical”, or “an unprincipled terrorist”? The question is still asked of rebels and protesters today.
9. Nero: The End of a Dynasty (1984)
by Miriam Griffin
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If you really want to understand the perils and pitfalls of ancient history, study Nero, and ideally through the eyes of Miriam Griffin. The late Oxford scholar adopted a rigorous but open-minded approach to the most maligned of Roman emperors. The sources of Tacitus, Suetonius and other classical historians can leave you with the impression that Nero was nothing short of a sadist; reading Griffin’s biography will teach you how to interrogate the ancient material and form a fair judgement for yourself. “Nero wasn’t all bad” is my stock response to visitors who eye my shelf-long collection of Nero books with suspicion. Griffin’s has always been my favourite.
8. The Spartans (2002)
by Paul Cartledge
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Paul Cartledge is the undisputed king of Greek history, and the foremost expert on ancient Sparta. If the only thing you “know” about its people is that they were merciless fighters who flung disabled babies off cliffs, you will be astonished by their less-discussed ways of life and the extraordinary combination of superstition and logic that shaped their outlook. Cartledge tackles what he calls “the Spartan myth”, which has brought them enduring fame and sometimes misplaced glory. It’s a brilliantly readable and deeply penetrating account.
7. The Greeks and the Irrational (1951)
by ER Dodds
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In 1936, Eric Robertson Dodds found himself the most hated man in Oxford as a result of being appointed Regius Professor of Greek over his rival Maurice Bowra. Dodds had, until then, written principally on obscure ancient philosophers. With this book, he finally revealed himself to be one of the most sophisticated thinkers of the 20th century. In probing their often bizarre spiritual and religious beliefs, he revealed the Greeks to be much less logical and judicious than was formerly supposed. I re-read the book in 2020 while writing a book about classicists in inter-war Oxford, and was struck by the clear-headedness with which Dodds moves from one complex thought to the next.
6. Courtesans and Fishcakes (1997)
by James Davidson
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This is one of the first books I remember my late father, a sculptor, reading when I was a child. I liked the cover, which shows a mosaic of a floor strewn with fishbones, and the title, which remains one of the most amusing on my shelves. James Davidson, today professor of classics and ancient history at Warwick, scrutinises sexual and alimentary lust with a rare lightness of touch. The Greeks, he well illustrates, were *opsomanes *(“fish-mad”), and rather too fond of the *kineterion *(“the brothel”). The book helped to establish the market for popular ancient history, and set a high bar, not least for debuts.
5. From the Gracchi to Nero (1959)
by HH Scullard
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I’ve recommended this book to more people than I can remember. It’s one of the best places to start if you’re seeking to understand why the Roman Republic ended, and the foundations of empire were laid. The late HH Scullard, reader at New College London, explains the motivations of the revolutionary Gracchi brothers, who were assassinated at the instigation of the Senate for their radical land reform bills, and charts the deepening senatorial divisions that made long-term conflict inevitable.
4. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89)
by Edward Gibbon
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I doubt I would be forgiven for omitting Gibbon’s classic from this list. That isn’t my reason for including it – I learned from Achilles to fear no wrath – but the cult status of this work does count for something. I’d wager that it’s largely because of Gibbon that modern men reportedly think about the Roman Empire several times a day. He established the parameters by which we still measure the greatness that enabled Rome’s longevity, and the flaws that shaped its downfall. While viewing decay as a natural consequence of “immoderate greatness”, he drew attention to Rome’s excessive prosperity and waning values during the rise of Christianity. There’s much we can learn from Gibbon and his diagnostics.
3. Tiberius: The Politician (1976)
by Barbara Levick
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Barbara Levick, who died aged 92 in 2023, was another of the greats. I just missed her at my Oxford college, but she returned to lecture and later read the manuscript of one of my books, providing much encouragement. She found her voice in a pre-jargon age in which readability was, for academics, deemed a virtue. I could recommend any of her biographies – she profiled Claudius, Augustus, Vespasian and many others – but her* Tiberius* grabbed me from the moment a friend gave me a copy. Rome’s second emperor was, like its fifth, Nero, a complicated man with a complicated legacy; but in Levick’s hands, he’s a full-blooded human, not a caricature.
2. The Roman Revolution (1939)
by Ronald Syme
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Ronald Syme, a New Zealand-born classicist, produced an almost impossible quantity of academic papers and books. He taught largely at Oxford, and counted Barbara Levick and Miriam Griffin among his doctoral students. This book on the political crisis that surrounded the assassination of Julius Caesar earned him fame in his own time – not least because he provoked controversy by presenting Augustus in terms that evoked contemporary European fascists. You need not agree with him on every point to find *The Roman Revolution *a masterly and scintillating read.
1. The History of Rome (1854-6)
by Theodor Mommsen
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This book, which fills three (later five) volumes, earned Theodor Mommsen the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902. His subject is the Roman Republic and its death; his style is one of life and pace. The German historian didn’t counter claims that aspects of his account were coloured by the politics of his own times. His admiration of Julius Caesar as a civilising force, for example, clearly reflected his despair with German liberalism. Over 170 years later, Mommsen’s scope, fluidity and insight continue to inspire awe.
*Daisy Dunn’s books include *The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World