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The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians (Vol. 1 of 6) Charles Rollin This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. |
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Romanus Lecapenus: The Great Pretender (Byzantium: The Rise of the Macedonians) Lars Brownworth This 15,500 word micro-book is the third in Lars Brownworth's "Byzantium: The Rise of the Macedonians" series.
On a late summer day in 944, a great procession entered through the Golden Gate of Constantinople and wound its way down the Via Triumphalis. There was no conquering hero or popular emperor in the lead. At it's head was the holiest relic in Christendom, a shroud of Christ miraculously printed with His image. This was the high point of Romanus Lecapenus’ reign, the culmination of more than twenty years of careful diplomacy and stewardship. The poor son of an unschooled father had restored the Roman Empire to much of its eastern glory. And yet, the great emperor was not there to enjoy his moment. He lay on his sickbed in the palace, tormented by his sins and seeing ominous signs of judgment all around him. Finally he rose and called for an attendant. Even if it caused his destruction, the Macedonian line would be returned to the throne.
Lars Brownworth created the genre-defining 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast, which prompted the New York Times to liken him to some of history's great popularizers. He is author of the book "Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization", which is available in bookstores and online. He speaks at various conferences and is currently working on a podcast that brings to life the reign of the Normans. |
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Alexander the Great Philip Freeman In the first authoritative biography of Alexander the Great written for a general audience in a generation, classicist and historian Philip Freeman tells the remarkable life of the great conqueror. The celebrated Macedonian king has been one of the most enduring figures in history. He was a general of such skill and renown that for two thousand years other great leaders studied his strategy and tactics, from Hannibal to Napoleon, with countless more in between. He flashed across the sky of history like a comet, glowing brightly and burning out quickly: crowned at age nineteen, dead by thirty-two. He established the greatest empire of the ancient world; Greek coins and statues are found as far east as Afghanistan. Our interest in him has never faded. Alexander was born into the royal family of Macedonia, the kingdom that would soon rule over Greece. Tutored as a boy by Aristotle, Alexander had an inquisitive mind that would serve him well when he faced formidable obstacles during his military campaigns. Shortly after taking command of the army, he launched an invasion of the Persian empire, and continued his conquests as far south as the deserts of Egypt and as far east as the mountains of present-day Pakistan and the plains of India. Alexander spent nearly all his adult life away from his homeland, and he and his men helped spread the Greek language throughout western Asia, where it would become the lingua franca of the ancient world. Within a short time after Alexander’s death in Baghdad, his empire began to fracture. Best known among his successors are the Ptolemies of Egypt, whose empire lasted until Cleopatra. In his lively and authoritative biography of Alexander, classical scholar and historian Philip Freeman describes Alexander’s astonishing achievements and provides insight into the mercurial character of the great conqueror. Alexander could be petty and magnanimous, cruel and merciful, impulsive and farsighted. Above all, he was ferociously, intensely competitive and could not tolerate losing—which he rarely did. As Freeman explains, without Alexander, the influence of Greece on the ancient world would surely not have been as great as it was, even if his motivation was not to spread Greek culture for beneficial purposes but instead to unify his empire. Only a handful of people have influenced history as Alexander did, which is why he continues to fascinate us. |
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Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire James Romm Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity.
The story of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire is known to many readers, but the dramatic and consequential saga of the empire’s collapse remains virtually untold. It is a tale of loss that begins with the greatest loss of all, the death of the Macedonian king who had held the empire together.
With his demise, it was as if the sun had disappeared from the solar system, as if planets and moons began to spin crazily in new directions, crashing into one another with unimaginable force.
Alexander bequeathed his power, legend has it, “to the strongest,” leaving behind a mentally damaged half brother and a posthumously born son as his only heirs. In a strange compromise, both figures—Philip III and Alexander IV—were elevated to the kingship, quickly becoming prizes, pawns, fought over by a half-dozen Macedonian generals. Each successor could confer legitimacy on whichever general controlled him.
At the book’s center is the monarch’s most vigorous defender; Alexander’s former Greek secretary, now transformed into a general himself. He was a man both fascinating and entertaining, a man full of tricks and connivances, like the enthroned ghost of Alexander that gives the book its title, and becomes the determining factor in the precarious fortunes of the royal family.
James Romm, brilliant classicist and storyteller, tells the galvanizing saga of the men who followed Alexander and found themselves incapable of preserving his empire. The result was the undoing of a world, formerly united in a single empire, now ripped apart into a nightmare of warring nation-states struggling for domination, the template of our own times. |
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The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander, widely considered the most authoritative history of the brilliant leader’s great conquests, is the latest addition to the acclaimed Landmark series.
After twelve years of hard-fought campaigns, Alexander the Great controlled a vast empire that was bordered by the Adriatic sea to the west and modern-day India to the east. Arrian, himself a military commander, combines his firsthand experience of battle with material from Ptolemy’s memoirs and other ancient sources to compose a singular portrait of Alexander. This vivid and engaging new translation of Arrian will fascinate readers who are interested in classical studies, the history of warfare, and the origins of East–West tensions still swirling in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan today. Enriched by the series’ trademark comprehensive maps, illustrations, and annotations, and with contributions from the preeminent classical scholars of today, The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander is the definitive edition of this essential work of ancient history. |
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Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire (Ancient Warfare and Civilization) Robin Waterfield Alexander the Great conquered an enormous empire--stretching from Greece to the Indian subcontinent--and his death triggered forty bloody years of world-changing warfare. These were years filled with high adventure, intrigue, passion, assassinations, dynastic marriages, treachery, shifting alliances, and mass slaughter on battlefield after battlefield. And while the men fought on the field, the women, such as Alexander's mother Olympias, schemed from their palaces and pavilions. The story of one of the great forgotten wars of history, Dividing the Spoils serves up a fast-paced narrative that captures this turbulent time as it revives the memory of the Successors of Alexander and their great war over his empire. The Successors, Robin Waterfield shows, were no mere plunderers. Indeed, Alexander left things in great disarray at the time of his death, with no guaranteed succession, no administration in place suitable for such a large realm, and huge untamed areas both bordering and within his empire. It was the Successors--battle-tested companions of Alexander such as Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Seleucus, and Antigonus the One-Eyed--who consolidated Alexander's gains. Their competing ambitions, however, eventually led to the break-up of the empire. To tell their story in full, Waterfield draws upon a wide range of historical materials, providing the first account that makes complete sense of this highly complex period. Astonishingly, this period of brutal, cynical warfare was also characterized by brilliant cultural achievements, especially in the fields of philosophy, literature, and art. A new world emerged from the dust and haze of battle, and, in addition to chronicling political and military events, Waterfield provides ample discussion of the amazing cultural flowering of the early Hellenistic Age. |
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Alexander the Great Robin Fox Robin Lane Fox's accessible and erudite life of Alexander the Great searches through the mass of conflicting evidence and legend to focus on the living actuality of the man and his experience--'It is tempting', he concludes, 'to see in Alexander the romantic's complex nature for the first time in Greek history.' Beautifully written perceptive and fluent, it is a superb example of historical scholarship and psychological insight. |
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Leo the Wise (886-912) (Byzantium: The Rise of the Macedonians) Lars Brownworth This 7,000 word micro-book is the first in Lars Brownworth's "Byzantium: The Rise of the Macedonians" series.
In the autumn of 886, the newly crowned emperor Leo VI presided over one of the strangest funerals in Byzantine history. The body of the long dead Michael III was dug up from its modest tomb and transported by imperial barge across the Bosporus. There it was carried in an ornate procession to the Church of the Holy Apostles and reverently laid in a sarcophagus that had once belonged to the 5th century emperor Justin I. It was a remarkable honor for a man who had been known in life as Michael the Drunkard, and the watching courtesans couldn’t fail to miss the point. Rumors had swirled in the capital for years that Michael was Leo’s true father and this seemed to dramatically confirm it. For those who looked a step further the audacity was breathtaking. Justin I had been followed on the throne by his far more brilliant nephew. If Michael now occupied his sarcophagus, than the twenty year old Leo had just proclaimed that he was the new Justinian.
Lars Brownworth created the genre-defining 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast, which prompted the New York Times to liken him to some of history's great popularizers. Recently, he finished a book titled Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, which is available in bookstores now. He speaks at various conferences and is currently working on a new podcast that brings to life the reign of the Normans. |
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Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography Peter Green Until recently, popular biographers and most scholars viewed Alexander the Great as a genius with a plan, a romantic figure pursuing his vision of a united world. His dream was at times characterized as a benevolent interest in the brotherhood of man, sometimes as a brute interest in the exercise of power. Green, a Cambridge-trained classicist who is also a novelist, portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Green describes his Alexander as "not only the most brilliant (and ambitious) field commander in history, but also supremely indifferent to all those administrative excellences and idealistic yearnings foisted upon him by later generations, especially those who found the conqueror, tout court, a little hard upon their liberal sensibilities."
This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. After he was named hegemon of the Hellenic League, many philosophers came to congratulate Alexander, but one was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic, an ascetic who lived in a clay tub. Piqued and curious, Alexander himself visited the philosopher, who, when asked if there was anything Alexander could do for him, made the famous reply, "Don't stand between me and the sun." Alexander's courtiers jeered, but Alexander silenced them: "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." This remark was as unexpected in Alexander as it would be in a modern leader.
For the general reader, the book, redolent with gritty details and fully aware of Alexander's darker side, offers a gripping tale of Alexander's career. Full backnotes, fourteen maps, and chronological and genealogical tables serve readers with more specialized interests. |
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Alexander the Great Paul Cartledge Paul Cartledge, one of the world’s foremost scholars of ancient Greece, illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander (356-323 BC), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire, and founder of a new world order.
Alexander's legacy has had a major impact on military tacticians, scholars, statesmen, adventurers, authors, and filmmakers. Cartledge brilliantly evokes Alexander's remarkable political and military accomplishments, cutting through the myths to show why he was such a great leader. He explores our endless fascination with Alexander and gives us insight into his charismatic leadership, his capacity for brutality, and his sophisticated grasp of international politics. Alexander the Great is an engaging portrait of a fascinating man, and a welcome balance to the myths, legends, and often skewed history that have obscured the real Alexander. |