Michael Crawford's highly praised history is now expanded and revised to accommodate recent discoveries and current thinking.

    European royalty sought out his secret elixir against poison. His life inspired Mozart's first opera, while for centuries poets and playwrights recited bloody, romantic tales of his victories, defeats, intrigues, concubines, and mysterious death. But until now no modern historian has recounted the full story of Mithradates, the ruthless king and visionary rebel who challenged the power of Rome in the first century BC. In this richly illustrated book--the first biography of Mithradates in fifty years--Adrienne Mayor combines a storyteller's gifts with the most recent archaeological and scientific discoveries to tell the tale of Mithradates as it has never been told before."The Poison King" describes a life brimming with spectacle and excitement. Claiming Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age fourteen after his mother poisoned his father. He fled into exile and returned in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence and fierce ambition. Hailed as a savior by his followers and feared as a second Hannibal by his enemies, he envisioned a grand Eastern empire to rival Rome. After massacring eighty thousand Roman citizens in 88 BC, he seized Greece and modern-day Turkey. Fighting some of the most spectacular battles in ancient history, he dragged Rome into a long round of wars and threatened to invade Italy itself. His uncanny ability to elude capture and surge back after devastating losses unnerved the Romans, while his mastery of poisons allowed him to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals."The Poison King" is a gripping account of one of Rome's most relentless but least understood foes.

    It was the battle that countless armies tried to imitate, most notably in World Wars I & II, the battle that obsessed military minds. Yet no general ever matched Hannibal's unexpected, innovative & brutal military victory--the costliest day of combat for any army in history. Robert L. O'Connell, an admired military historian, now tells the whole story of Cannae, giving a stirring account of this apocalyptic battle of the 2nd Punic War, its causes & consequences. O'Connell shows how a restive Rome amassed a giant army to punish Carthage's commander, who'd dealt them deadly blows at Trebia & Lake Trasimene, & how Hannibal outwitted enemies that outnumbered him. He describes Hannibal's strategy of blinding his opponents with sun & dust, enveloping them in a deadly embrace & sealing their escape, before launching a massive knife fight that would kill 48,000 men in close contact. The Ghosts of Cannae then conveys how this disastrous pivot point in Rome's history ultimately led to the republic's resurgence & the creation of its empire. Piecing together decayed shreds of ancient reportage, the author paints powerful portraits of the leading players: Hannibal, resolutely sane & uncannily strategic; Varro, Rome's co-consul scapegoated for the loss; & Scipio Africanus, the surviving, self-promoting Roman military tribune who would one day pay back Hannibal at Zama in N. Africa. Finally, O'Connell reveals how Cannae's legend has inspired & haunted military leaders ever since, & the lessons it teaches. Superbly researched, written with erudite wit, The Ghosts of Cannae is the definitive account of a battle whose history still resonates.

    Its eastern half, which would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire, would endure and often flourish for another eleven centuries. Though its capital would move to Constantinople, its citizens referred to themselves as Roman for the entire duration of the empire’s existence. Indeed, so did its neighbors, allies, and enemies: When the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453, he took the title Caesar of Rome, placing himself in a direct line that led back to Augustus.For far too many otherwise historically savvy people today, the story of the Byzantine civilization is something of a void. Yet for more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages, Byzantium held fast against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianity alive. When literacy all but vanished in the West, Byzantium made primary education available to both sexes. Students debated the merits of Plato and Aristotle and commonly committed the entirety of Homer’s Iliad to memory. Streams of wealth flowed into Constantinople, making possible unprecedented wonders of art and architecture, from fabulous jeweled mosaics and other iconography to the great church known as the Hagia Sophia that was a vision of heaven on earth. The dome of the Great Palace stood nearly two hundred feet high and stretched over four acres, and the city’s population was more than twenty times that of London’s.From Constantine, who founded his eponymous city in the year 330, to Constantine XI, who valiantly fought the empire’s final battle more than a thousand years later, the emperors who ruled Byzantium enacted a saga of political intrigue and conquest as astonishing as anything in recorded history. Lost to the West is replete with stories of assassination, mass mutilation and execution, sexual scheming, ruthless grasping for power, and clashing armies that soaked battlefields with the blood of slain warriors numbering in the tens of thousands.Still, it was Byzantium that preserved for us today the great gifts of the classical world. Of the 55,000 ancient Greek texts in existence today, some 40,000 were transmitted to us by Byzantine scribes. And it was the Byzantine Empire that shielded Western Europe from invasion until it was ready to take its own place at the center of the world stage. Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to this empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy.

    Second wife of the emperor Augustus and the mother of his successor Tiberius, Livia has been vilified by posterity (most notably by Tacitus and Robert Graves) as the quintessence of the scheming Roman matriarch, poisoning her relatives one by one to smooth her son's path to the imperial throne. In this elegant and rigorously researched biography, Matthew Dennison rescues the historical Livia from this crudely drawn caricature of the popular imagination. He depicts a complex, courageous and richly gifted woman whose true crime was not was not murder but the exercise of power, and who, in a male-dominated society, had the energy to create for herself both a prominent public profile and a significant sphere of political influence.

    Roger Crowley's readable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current jihad between the West and the Middle East.

    Vast & powerful, Imperial Rome instituted many conventions that distinguish life today--reason enough for us to wonder about the men who ruled in her name. Some early writers painted vivid portraits that, with their sensational details, often overshadowed the events of the time. In this book, classical historian Michael Grant uses these writings, augmenting them with evidence from archeology, inscriptions, coins & medallions to reconstruct the lives of 92 Roman emperors. Here are Augustus & Claudius, Gaius & Nero, Aurelian & Constantine, as colorful & diverse a group of men as any in history, alive again in a magnificent collection of biographical cameos as remarkable for their readability as for their depth.AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsList of Maps, Plans & Genealogical TablesForewordThe Julio-Claudian dynastyThe year of the four emperors; & the Flavian dynastyThe adoptive & Antonine emperorsThe house of SeverusThe age of crisisMilitary recoveryThe tetrarchy & the house of ConstantineThe house of ValentinianThe survival of the East & fall of the WestKey to Latin TermsIndex of Latin & Greek AuthorsIndex to Maps & Plans

    Yet the privilege and decadence often associated with the Roman elite was underpinned by the toils and tribulations of the common citizens. Here, the eminent historian Robert Knapp brings those invisible inhabitants of Rome and its vast empire to light.He seeks out the ordinary folk laboring men, housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators who formed the backbone of the ancient Roman world, and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. He finds their traces in the nooks and crannies of the histories, treatises, plays, and poetry created by the elite. Everyday people come alive through original sources as varied as graffiti, incantations, magical texts, proverbs, fables, astrological writings, and even the New Testament.Knapp offers a glimpse into a world far removed from our own, but one that resonates through history. "Invisible Romans" allows us to see how Romans sought on a daily basis to survive and thrive under the afflictions of disease, war, and violence, and to control their fates before powers that variously oppressed and ignored them.

    Justinian, the great law-giver, appears as a hateful tyrant, wedded to an ex-prostitute, Theodora; and Belisarius, the brilliant general whose secretary Procopius had been, is seen as the pliable dupe of his wife Antonina, a woman as corrupt and scheming as Theodora herself.

    It was a time of assassinations and civil war, of armies so out of control that they had no qualms about occupying the city of Rome, and of ambitious men who ruthlessly seized power only to have it wrenched from their grasps. In 69 AD, Gwyn Morgan offers a fresh look at this period, based on two considerations to which insufficient attention has been paid in the past. First, that we need to unravel rather than cherry-pick between the conflicting accounts of Tacitus, Plutarch and Suetonius, our three main sources of information. And second, that the role of the armies, as distinct from that of their commanders, has too often been exaggerated. The result is a remarkably accurate and insightful narrative history, filled with colorful portraits of the leading participants and new insights into the nature of the Roman military. A strikingly vivid account of ancient Rome, 69 AD is an original and compelling account of one of the best known but perhaps least understood periods in all Roman history. It will engage and enlighten all readers with a love for the tumultuous soap opera that was Roman political life.

    Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.

    O’Donnell is a “vigorous” (Kirkus Reviews) and “richly layered” (Publishers Weekly) history of Rome’s fall. Renowned historian and author of Augustine, O’Donnell revisits this ancient tale in a fresh way, bringing home its sometimes painful relevance to today’s political issues.

    Introduction 2. The Sources 3. Pre-Roman Italy and the Etruscans 4. The Foundation of Rome 5. The Kings of Rome 6. Regal Society 7. The Beginnings of the Republic 8. The Struggle of the Orders 9. Roman Expansion in Italy 10. The Roman Confederation in Italy 11. The International Scene on the Eve of Roman Expansion 12. Carthage and the First Punic War 13. The Second Punic (or Hannibalic) War 14. Rome in the Eastern Mediterranean 15. Explaining the Rise of the Roman Empire 16. "The Captured Conqueror"-Rome and Hellenism 17. Governing the Roman Republic, Part I-Senate and Magistrates 18. Governing the Roman Republic, Part II-Popular Assemblies and Provincial Administration 19. The Pressures of Empire 20. The Gracchi Brothers 21. Marius and Sulla 22. "The Royal Rule of Sulla" 23. Sulla's Reforms Undone 24. Pompey and Crassus 25. The First Triumvirate 26. Pompey and Caesar 27. "The Domination of Caesar" 28. Social and Cultural Life in the Late Republic 29. Antony and Octavian 30. The Second Triumvirate 31. Octavian Emerges Supreme 32. The New Order of Augustus 33. The Imperial Succession 34. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty 35. The Emperor in the Roman World 36. The Third-Century Crisis 37. The Shape of Roman Society 38. Roman Slavery 39. The Family 40. Women in Roman Society 41. An Empire of Cities 42. Public Entertainment, Part I-The Roman Baths and Chariot Racing 43. Public Entertainment, Part II-Gladiatorial Games 44. Roman Paganism 45. The Rise of Christianity 46. The Restoration of Order 47. Constantine and the Late Empire 48. Thoughts on the "Fall" of the Roman Empire

    The transformation of state and society, the violent transference of power and property, and the establishment of Augustus' rule are presented in an unconventional narrative, which quotes from ancient evidence, refers seldomly to modern authorities, and states controversial opinions quite openly. The result is a book which is both fresh and compelling.

    Yet little has been known about who they really were and their true roles in the history-making schemes of imperial Rome's ruling Caesars--indeed, how they figured in the rise, decline, and fall of the empire. Now, in Caesars' Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire, Annelise Freisenbruch pulls back the veil on these fascinating women in Rome's power circles, giving them the chance to speak for themselves for the first time. With impeccable scholarship and arresting storytelling, Freisenbruch brings their personalities vividly to life, from notorious Livia and scandalous Julia to Christian Helena. Starting at the year 30 BC, when Cleopatra, Octavia, and Livia stand at the cusp of Rome's change from a republic to an autocracy, Freisenbruch relates the story of Octavian and Marc Antony's clash over the fate of the empire--an archetypal story that has inspired a thousand retellings--in a whole new light, uncovering the crucial political roles these first "first ladies" played. From there, she takes us into the lives of the women who rose to power over the next five centuries--often amid violence, speculation, and schemes--ending in the fifth century ad, with Galla Placidia, who was captured by Goth invaders (and married to one of their kings). The politics of Rome are revealed through the stories of Julia, a wisecracking daughter who disgraced her father by getting drunk in the Roman forum and having sex with strangers on the speaker's platform; Poppea, a vain and beautiful mistress who persuaded the emperor to kill his mother so that they could marry; Domitia, a wife who had a flagrant affair with an actor before conspiring in her husband's assassination; and Fausta, a stepmother who tried to seduce her own stepson and then engineered his execution--afterward she was boiled to death as punishment.Freisenbruch also tells a fascinating story of how the faces of these influential women have been refashioned over the millennia to tell often politically motivated stories about their reigns, in the process becoming models of femininity and female power. Illuminating the anxieties that persist even today about women in or near power and revealing the female archetypes that are a continuing legacy of the Roman Empire, Freisenbruch shows the surprising parallels of these iconic women and their public and private lives with those of our own first ladies who become part of the political agenda, as models of comportment or as targets for their husbands' opponents. Sure to transform our understanding of these first ladies, the influential women who witnessed one of the most gripping, significant eras of human history, Caesars' Wives is a significant new chronicle of an era that set the foundational story of Western Civilization and hung the mirror into which every era looks to find its own reflection.