Denied citizenship by the Roman Empire, a soldier named Alaric changed history by unleashing a surprise attack on the capital city of an unjust empire.Stigmatized and relegated to the margins of Roman society, the Goths were violent “barbarians” who...

Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent and ambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is the fate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteen...

In the tradition of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, Brown lays to rest the hoary myth that Viking society was ruled by men and celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors“Once again, Brown brings Viking history to vivid, unexpected life―and in the...

Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children - the last holdouts of the revolt against Rome following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple - reportedly took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman army...

The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern worldThe fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's...

"Imagine a book about an unnecessary war written by the ruthless general of an occupying army - a vivid and dramatic propaganda piece that forces the reader to identify with the conquerors and that is designed, like the war itself, to fuel the limitless...

A bold reassessment of what caused the Late Bronze Age collapseIn 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into...

"Reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poets. Gilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found...

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh...

What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait.“[An] infectious sense of narrative...

A succinct and comprehensive history of the development of citizenship from the Roman Empire to the present dayCitizenship, Inequality, and Difference offers a concise and sweeping overview of citizenship's complex evolution, from ancient Rome to the...

With stylistic brilliance and historical imagination, the first five books of Livy's monumental history of Rome record events from the foundation of Rome through the history of the seven kings, the establishment of the Republic and its internal...

How the maternal image of the empress Julia Domna helped the Roman empire rule.Ancient authors emphasize dramatic moments in the life of Julia Domna, wife of Roman emperor Septimius Severus (193–211). They accuse her of ambition unforgivable in a woman,...

The book provides an easily digestible introduction to Cleopatra's world... A fascinating introduction to an era when the political and military face of the Mediterranean world was changing rapidly. ―Patricia Spencer, Egyptian ArchaeologyFew other...

A New Testament scholar challenges the belief that American family values are based on "Judeo-Christian" norms by drawing unexpected comparisons between ancient Christian theories and modern discoursesChallenging the long-held assumption that...

A compelling history of radical transformation in the fourth-century--when Christianity decimated the practices of traditional pagan religion in the Roman Empire.The Final Pagan Generation recounts the fascinating story of the lives and fortunes of the...

Diotima at the Barricades argues that the debates that emerged from the burgeoning of feminist intellectual life in post-modern France involved complex, structured, and reciprocal exchanges on the interpretation and position of Plato and other ancient...

From one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, an innovative and comprehensive account of religion in the ancient Roman and Mediterranean worldIn this ambitious and authoritative book, Jörg Rüpke provides a comprehensive and strikingly...

How religious ritual united a growing and diversifying Roman RepublicMany narrative histories of Rome's transformation from an Italian city-state to a Mediterranean superpower focus on political and military conflicts as the primary agents of social...