Ancient History....Help on Books

[tonic]

Can anyone help me find a book that can teach me more about Ancient History. This isn't for school and is solely for the reason of educating me more about the civilizations that came before because I find it all extremely interesting. Whether the books be about Britania, Troy, Rome everything. Im also a big fan of mythology but I can't seem to find any interesting books because most of the one's I find are quite boring. So if anyone can suggest something, i'll check it out and see if my library has it.

Thanks in advance

 

[Esioul]

Sir Ronald Syme's 'The Roman Revolution' is excellant on one part of Roman history. It's great fun to read the original sources in translation as well. I reccomend Suetonius' 'The Twelve Caesar's', very funny and rude, but anyway. Read Virgil's Aeneid too.

 

[fallenstar]

Iliad and Odessey is boring if you found the wrong translator, like Chapman who is a great master except that his tranlation of Homer will serious make a person bored to death if not so exaggerating. I heard of other translators that translate them into prose, I think it's the Penguin Classic edition or something.

 

[Esioul]

Yeah.... best to go for the penguin classic. I like the West translation of Virgil,too: I usually avoid the ones in verse, they're so much more difficult to read.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

'A History of India' by Romila Thapar (Penguin Books) is an excellent introduction to Ancient India.

 

[Brian G Turner]

If you have any good clearance bookshops or second hand bookshops near you, it's always worth checking these out - big glossy photo-laden ones are my favourites.

However, if you want resources specific to fantas writing, there are some recommendations posted up here: http://www.chronicles-network.net/forum/showthread.php?t=94

 

[polymorphikos]

The Histories, by Herodotus. Gives you a dense, highly entertaining sourcebook on a great deal of Greek and Meditteranean history, aswell as insight into the cultures and everything. A great deal of it is speculation or hearsay, but if you use commonsense then it's incredibly useful, and he usually points-out when he's relating something second-hand.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Nooooo!!! Not Herodotus!! Bored me to tears, that did!

Sort of a "things heard down the pub" sort of book, isn;t it?

For a real life glimpse of the ancient world try Thucydides "The Peloponnesian War" and Xenophon "March of the 10,000" (or whatever title it currently goes under) for a look at ancient Greece. Both books are very good.

For Rome Suetonious "Twelve Caesars" is probably the best, but do be aware that he repeats any old gossip and rumour, and a lot of it is mistaken as "actual history".

For the history of Byzantium/ Constinople try John Julius Norwich - he wrote an excellent 3 part series, but there's a condensed one-book publication. The great thing about Byzantine history is that you have a big cross-over between the ancient world and the mediaeval - and generally so close in content to most fantasy: castles, kings, mass battles, great walls, emperors, wild hordes, desert kingdoms, great learning centers, strong religious groups, knights, seiges, invasions and naval warfare - plenty to source for writing!

 

[polymorphikos]

wher as with Herodotus you have the story of the king who dreamt that his daughter made water until it flooded the kingdom. And a guy got his kid served to him for dinner. And did you know that in the top of the temple of Babylon a virgin would lie and wait for a god to come and ravish her. I just hope she brought a thick paper-back book and some French knitting.

 

[Esioul]

Don't mention Thucidydes to me...

Or even Herodotus...

Was it Atreus who ate his kid? I can't remember. There's lots of instances of people being eaten by horses though.

 

[The Master™]

I have a book called "Ancient Civilisations" published by The Times...

From 3100BC (Old Kingdom Egypt) to 1532AD (Empires of the Andes)...

Gives you a flavour of different civilisations... Then you go out and get some more information...

Or you could try: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/

But that tends to be for Roman, Egyptian, etc (the "popular" ones)...

 

[Brian G Turner]

The thing I remember most about Herodotus is that the whole reason for it is to explain why the Persians and Greeks came to blows - but he takes about 500 pages of digression to actually get to the point. As for memorable stories he tells - women having sex with goats in Egypt. I remembered that not least because of the extraordinary similarity to extracted confessions from "witches" across the mediaeval period.

As for Thucidydes - ah, as with most books, better read voluntarily than forced.

 

[tonic]

If I wanted to start at the beginning, not at the Mayans or Incans but something like Greece or Egypt which civilization should I begin with. I think I want to go in order, or the most interesting but somewhere twoards the beginning. I think if I go and try to understand all the civilizations at once i'll just give myself a headache.
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[Esioul]

I know, I know, I know... or at least I should know. I was given a copy of Thucidydes and told to read it, it would be useful for my Oxford interview. Somehow I never did get round to reading it,and it did come up in the interview, and I totally messed it up. Grrr.

Goats..... yuk.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Read a general book on Egypt - covering the Old Kingdom through to the New Kingdom.

Then read a general book on the Ancient Greeks, especially the 5th-4th centuries BC.

The read something general on Rome.

That would be a good order.

Again, I highly recommend cheap bookshops - *the* book that really pushed my interest was a glorious big thick over-sized hardback, covered from head to foot in colour photographs, of the condensed version of Gibbons "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". The text wasn't in chronological order, and was at times hard to read - but just a pause to look at the pictures and it just sent you there, somehow. And how much did the book cost? An incredibly modest £9.99.

I purchased a lot of ancient history books from clearance book shops, but they tended to be more pictures than text, so I really starting to blow my money at Waterstones.

 

[polymorphikos]

I'll defend Herodotus's digressions onthe grounds that he was actually trying to compile a data-base of everything he'd ever heard about the world. Apparently he'd heard quite a bit. Maybe I should try that.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Heh, it might have been an issue of expectation.

I don't remember which other works I'd read first - I simply remember being relieved to reach the very last pages of the book.

It might be more fun if I read it again - it was rich with stories - but it is quite a large work. Perhaps a big lavish over-sized hardback filled cover to cover with lush colour photographs surrounding the text would be most inviting.

 

[tonic]

Think Im gonna start by reading The Twelve Cesars and Alexander The Great (from that list in medival/fantasy resources)

Hope there interesting....If im nto farmiliar with a lot of the history will I understand the books?

 

[Brian G Turner]

The Robin Lane Fox version of Alexander? It is interesting, but a little long, and there is a lot of commentary. Then again, it doesn't skimp on the events.

Suetonius is a general good easy read.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

Robin Lane Fox views Alexander from the perspective of his alcoholism if I remember correctly.

The following texts are considered to be 'must reads' on Alexander the Great:

Quintus Curtius Rufus. The History of Alexander.
Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander.
Plutarch. Alexander.

If I remember correctly I preferred Plutarch and Arrian, and found Rufus a little bit dull. Just my opinion though. If you can get hold of the Michael Wood BBC video series, In the footsteps of Alexander, then you are in for a pleasurable journey into the world of Alexander. Wood revisits all of the actual locations that Alexander journeyed through on his conquest of Persia and reads from the above texts. It is a marvellous venture into the ancient world. Michael Wood is fantastic.

The Alexander trilogy by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, although a work of fiction, is a very accurate account of Alexanders life. It is the basis of one of the Alexander films due out next year. Once again, I recommend this series to everybody on these boards. They are fantastic.

I hope that you are interested in Alexander, or I have just wasted your time....