As politician and diplomat, writer and lover, but above all as a military genius, Julius Caesar is one of the perennially fascinating figures in history -- Boswell called him "the greatest man of any age." Christian Meier's authoritative and accessible biography is the definitive modern account of Caesar's life and career, setting Caesar's life story against the rich political and social background of the Late Roman Republic.

    The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1,300 years ago. The author's conclusions are persuasive: at the core is not material riches but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village all the way to contemporary politics and the entire edifice of the Christian faith. It involves nothing less than... the Holy Grail.

    It was a period marked by lavish displays of wealth, a dazzling cultural mix, and the advent of Christianity. The splendor and squalor of the city, the spectacles, and the day’s routines are reconstructed from an immense fund of archaeological evidence and from vivid descriptions by ancient poets, satirists, letter-writers, and novelists—from Petronius to Pliny the Younger. In a new Introduction, the eminent classicist Mary Beard appraises the book’s enduring—and sometimes surprising—influence and its value for general readers and students. She also provides an up-to-date bibliographic essay. “Carcopino’s pledge to his readers was to open up to them some traces of the world that lay underneath the grandeur that remains the public face of ancient Rome. . . . No one has ever done it better.”—Mary Beard, from the Introduction

    Vicious gangs ruled the streets of Crassus and Pompey, routinely preying on plebeian and patrician alike. So the garroting of a lowly ex-slave and the disembowelment of a foreign merchant in the dangerous Subura district seemed of little consequence to the Roman hierarchy. But Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, high-born commander of the local vigiles, was determined to investigate. Despite official apathy, brazen bribes and sinister threats, Decius uncovers a world of corruption at the highest levels of his government that threatens to destroy him and the government he serves. Set in 70 B.C.

    The intellectual and spiritual worlds of women are also explored.Based on an abundance of research from the last twenty-five years, Medieval Women describes the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the Middle Ages.

    She wore a twisted torc and a tunic of many colours ... She carried a spear to instil terror in all who saw her.' Dio Cassius In AD 61 Roman governor Suetonius Paullinus, a veteran of mountain warfare in Africa, led a crushing defeat by the 14th and 20th legions of Boudicca's revolt. The defeat of Boudicca in effect made the Roman occupation of Britain possible - a victory would at the very least have seriously delayed it and possibly altered the whole course of the country's history. Among the British, women could inherit land, rule whole areas, lead armies. Boudicca did all three. And what made her revolt in AD 61 so terrifying was that she united other tribes under her and all but destroyed Rome's power base in the country. Boudicca herself left a twofold legacy. Surviving Paullinus' crushing defeat of her troops, she is traditionally alleged to have taken poison, along with her daughters. She had taken on the might of the greatest power of the ancient world and nearly driven it out of part of its empire; the Britons mourned her deeply and gave her a costly burial. Speeches attributed to her by the Romans on

    M. Ironside's saga of the Thutmosides of ancient Egypt. This set contains: The Sekhmet Bed: Book 1 Thirteen-year-old Ahmose is given as Great Royal Wife to the new king, to legitimize his rule. But her elder sister Mutnofret has been raised to expect the privileged station. As Ahmose fights the currents of Egypt's politics and Mutnofret's vengeful anger, her youth and inexperience carry her beyond her depth and into the realm of sacrilege. To right her wrongs and save Egypt from the gods' wrath, Ahmose must face her most visceral fear: bearing an heir. But the gods of Egypt are exacting, and even her sacrifice may not be enough to restore the Two Lands to safety. The Crook and Flail: Book 2 Hatshepsut longs for power, but a woman on the throne defies the sacred order. As God's Wife of Amun, she believes she has found the perfect balance of peace and order. But when the powerful men of Egypt plot to replace her, she must decide whether to surrender her birthright to a man, or take for herself the throne of the Pharaoh. Sovereign of Stars: Book 3 Never in Egypt's long history has a woman reigned as king. As Hatshepsut wrestles with foreign enemies and domestic politics, her heart grows ever more troubled, for her daughter Neferure is haunted by a brutal and demanding god. Hatshepsut's fight to retain her hold on power, peace, and Neferure will carry her on an incomparable journey to the legendary kingdom of Punt. There, in the god's own valley, she must confront the bleakness of fate and the terrible frailty of eternity. The Bull of Min: Book 4 Conspiracy and treason simmer in the Two Lands. When an unexpected challenger to the succession arises, the royal family must face impossible choices. To protect what she most loves, the young queen Meryet will match wits against a demon from the past. Hatshepsut stands on the brink of the ultimate sacrifice. And Thutmose, torn between throne and family, must commit an unthinkable act against Hatshepsut...or allow Egypt to fall into the hands of an unpredictable killer.

    From Queen Nefertiti of Egypt, to the villainous Catherine de Medici and her flying squadron, to England's 'Gloriana' Elizabeth I, and the modern phenomenon of female prime ministers - Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Benazir Bhutto - Claudia Gold looks at three and a half thousand years of history to examine the lives of fifty of the world's most exceptional rulers - all of them women.Each biographical profile sets its subject clearly in the culture and context of its time, enabling the author not only to tell the stories of these 50 astonishing women, but also to provide a fascinating and informative alternative social history.

    Virtually everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, takes for granted that the prophet of Islam lived and led in seventh-century Arabia.But this widely accepted story begins to crumble on close examination, as Robert Spencer shows in his eye-opening new book.In his blockbuster bestseller The Truth about Muhammad, Spencer revealed the shocking contents of the earliest Islamic biographical material about the prophet of Islam. Now, in Did Muhammad Exist? , he uncovers that material’s surprisingly shaky historical foundations. Spencer meticulously examines historical records, archaeological findings, and pioneering new scholarship to reconstruct what we can know about Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the early days of Islam. The evidence he presents challenges the most fundamental assumptions about Islam’s origins. Did Muhammad Exist? reveals: How the earliest biographical material about Muhammad dates from at least 125 years after his reported death How six decades passed before the Arabian conquerors—or the people they conquered—even mentioned Muhammad, the Qur’an, or Islam The startling evidence that the Qur’an was constructed from existing materials—including pre-Islamic Christian texts How even Muslim scholars acknowledge that countless reports of Muhammad’s deeds were fabricated Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but, astonishingly, to Jesus How the oldest records referring to a man named Muhammad bear little resemblance to the now-standard Islamic account of the life of the prophet The many indications that Arabian leaders fashioned Islam for political reasons Far from an anti-Islamic polemic, Did Muhammad Exist? is a sober but unflinching look at the origins of one of the world’s major religions. While Judaism and Christianity have been subjected to searching historical criticism for more than two centuries, Islam has never received the same treatment on any significant scale.The real story of Muhammad and early Islam has long remained in the shadows. Robert Spencer brings it into the light at long last.

    Alone Of All Her Sex: The Myth And The Cult Of The Virgin Mary, by Warner, Marina

    For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, spy, one of the most respected scholars in Asia, and the greatest of nineteenth-century travelers.On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, he would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the same time, for this was the era of the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands. Masson discovered tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000-year-old Bimaran golden casket, which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha. He would be offered his own kingdom; he would change the world, and the world would destroy him.This is a wild journey through nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan, with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us a world of espionage and dreamers, ne'er-do-wells and opportunists, extreme violence both personal and military, and boundless hope. At the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains, it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries.

    Newly revised and containing information from recent excavations and discovered artifacts, Ancient Iraq covers the political, cultural, and socio-economic history from Mesopotamia days of prehistory to the Christian era

    It discusses customs, politics, philosophy, religious attitudes and positive law that the Romans bequeathed to the world.

    Ranging from 700,000 BC to 311 AD, this volume portrays the emergence and development of Egypt from its prehistoric roots to its conquest by the Roman Empire. The contributors--all leading scholars working at the cutting edge of Egyptology--incorporate the latest findings in archaeological research as they chart the principal political events of Egyptian history, from the rise of the Pharaohs and the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, to the ascension of the Ptolemies and the coming of Roman legions. The book also includes the first detailed examinations of three periods which were previously regarded as dark ages. Against the backdrop of the birth and death of ruling dynasties, the writers also examine cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature, monumental architecture, funerary beliefs, and much more. The contributors illuminate the underlying patterns of social and political change and describe the changing face of ancient Egypt, from the biographical details of individuals to the social and economic factors that shaped the lives of the people as a whole. The only up-to-date, single-volume history of ancient Egypt available in English, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is a must read for everyone interested in one of the great civilizations of antiquity.

    Lucy, the Countess of Carlisle, dominated the royal scene. Her beauty was immortalized in magnificent Van Dyck portraits, her political skills attracted many famous lovers, and her talent as a gossip ensured her inclusion in the queen's inner circle—until civil war and its machinations led to her imprisonment in the Tower of London.Her sister, Dorothy, Countess of Leicester—wife of a diplomat and an ancestor of Princess Diana—managed the family estates and raised twelve surviving children. Though brilliant, with a keen eye and special purview of European politics, she had a reputation as a shrewish wife and, when her husband rebelled after thirty-five years of marriage, it caused a public scandal.Viewing a tempestuous era through the exceptional lives of Lucy and Dorothy Percy, Lita-Rose Betcherman's Court Lady and Country Wife offers a perfect window into a remarkable world.