'The greatest historian that ever lived' Such was Macaulay's verdict on Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) and his history of the Peloponnesian War, the momentous struggle between Athens …
'You know how to win a battle, Hannibal; you do not know how to use the victory!' Livy's great history of Rome contains, in Books 21 to 30, the definitive ancient account of …
Herodotus is not only known as the `father of history', as Cicero called him, but also the father of ethnography; as well as charting the historical background to the Persian Wars, …
'People have it in their minds that he would have been a match for Alexander, had Alexander turned his arms on Europe.' So Livy characterizes Papirius Cursor, one of Rome's famous …
The Gallic War, published on the eve of the civil war which led to the end of the Roman Republic, is an autobiographical account written by one of the most famous figures of …
'He was deaf to the murmurs of conscience, and resolved to satisfy his desires at any price.' The Monk (1796) is a sensational story of temptation and depravity, a masterpiece of …
'It is I think the most radical Book that has been written in these late centuries . . . and will give pleasure and displeasure, one may expect, to almost all classes of persons.' …
'War is merely the continuation of policy by other means' On War is one of the most important books ever written on the subject of war. Clausewitz, a Prussian officer who fought …
'The bitter tragedy of human life-- horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. ' In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, …
'That was how things stood in the city at the time. With no one in charge, murders were taking place almost every day and the elections could not be held.' Books 36-40 of the Roman …
