Category: Ancient Greece
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Alexander the Great (1974) by Robin Lane Fox
There is no shortage of biographies on Alexander the Great. This one from Robin Lane Fox, now over three decades in print, may be the best. Fox seeks to retrieve, from the murky depths of the ancient past, Alexander the man, chipping away at the myth and libel that have become part of his towering…
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The Trial of Socrates (1988) by I.F. Stone
“He was the first martyr of free speech and free thought.” So claims I.F. Stone in this 1988 bestseller about the trial and execution of Socrates, the great Athenian philosopher, in 399 BC. Thirty years after its initial publication, the relevance of the story has never been greater. In a world of campus safe spaces,…
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The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece – and Western Civilization (2004) by Barry Strauss
Barry Strauss is a world-class academic classicist, but “The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece — and Western Civilization” is geared for the more general reader. He tells the story of the Persian invasion of Greece in 490 BC and the decisive naval battle at Salamis with an easy style focused on…
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The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge (2015) by Paul Rahe
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The same could even be said for its title. Paul Rahe’s latest effort, “The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge,” is an excellent book, it just doesn’t have all that much to do with the grand strategy of classical Sparta. Rather, it is…
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Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (2009) by John R. Hale
John Hale was an undergraduate student of the famed classicist Donald Kagan at Yale in the early 1970s when he first fell in love with ancient Greek history. Hale was also a member of the college crew team and was thus intimately familiar with the mechanics and challenges of strenuous rowing, a unique and valuable…
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Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (1990) by Donald Kagan
The great Greek historian Thucydides remarked that Athens in the 430s BC “was in name a democracy, but really a government by the first person.” That first man – “protos amer” in Greek – was Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the hero of the Battle of Mycale against the Persians in 479, mentee of the radical…
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The Honey And The Hemlock: Democracy & Paranoia In Ancient Athens & Modern America (1991) by Eli Sagan
I wanted to love this book. It directly addresses a topic that has been vexing since I began studying ancient Athenian democracy in earnest this past year: Why were classical Athenians – both individually and collectively – capable of both genius and stupidity? How could the same people who created the Parthenon and theatrical tragedy…
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The Origins Of Western Warfare: Militarism And Morality In The Ancient World (1996) by Doyne Dawson
The twentieth century was the bloodiest in history. Given how bloody other centuries have been, that is really saying something. Why is western civilization, so remarkably progressive in so many ways, so obstinately aggressive and warlike? In “The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World,” historian Doyne Dawson argues that the…
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Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (1978) by Donald W. Engels
Few military commanders have succeeded quite like Alexander the Great. At the age of 33 he had conquered much of the known world. In this slim monograph (122 pages) first published in 1978, scholar Donald Engels argues that Alexander’s novel system of logistics was the cornerstone of his vaunted military machine. Although the details of…
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