'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 …
'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 …
'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 …
'any service I may have rendered my countrymen in my active life I may also extend to them... now that I am at leisure' Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Rome's greatest orator, …
'With fair-tressed Demeter, the sacred goddess, my song begins, With herself and her slim-ankled daughter, whom Aidoneus once Abducted...' Most people are familiar, at least by …
'I will do as the Senate decrees.' These words from one of Rome's opponents encapsulate the authority Rome achieved by its subjugation of the Mediterranean. The Third Macedonian …
'I am Josephus...I myself fought against the Romans' In August of AD 70 the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman forces after a six-month siege. This was the disastrous …
Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present (1843) was a prophetic warning of impending disaster for mid-Victorian Britain that was delivered in what the author described as a 'miraculous …
