Before 448, the Greeks saw Attila the Hun as simply a frightening, ruthless leader. When the Greek historian Priscus visited his courts that year, however, he had a far different experience to report. Priscus’ first-hand account of life at Attila’s court shows a different side to the vicious king. While his record is undoubtedly covered in bloodshed and brutality, Priscus reveals Attila as a man also capable of courtesy, generosity, and even—occasionally—mercy.

Attila, also known as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. During his reign he was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans, but was unable to take Constantinople. He also attempted to conquer Roman Gaul (modern France), crossing the Rhi...

'Masterly' - Robert Harris, author of Imperium'Essential reading for anyone interested in Ancient Rome' Independent*****Caesar Augustus schemed and fought his way to absolute power. He became Rome's first emperor and ruled for forty-four years before dying peacefully in his bed. The system he created would endure for centuries.Yet, despite his exceptional success, he is a difficult man to pin down, and far l...

The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, is the only Latin novel to survive complete from antiquity, a dazzling mixture of comic adventure, erotic intrigue, religious allegory, and philosophical transformation. Its narrator, Lucius, driven by curiosity about magic, is accidentally changed into a donkey and wanders through a world of cruelty, deception, desire, and spectacle before finding redemption through the goddess Isis. Written in a richly ornate, playful, and rhetorically sophisticated styl...

For nearly four centuries, from AD 43 to 410, Britain was a small province on the north western edge of the vast Roman Empire. Patricia Southerns masterly new history tells the story from first contact, through invasion and conquest, coexistence to eventual decline incorporating the political, social and cultural history of Britannia. For the first time the wealth of voices from the varied population of Roman Britain are placed centre stage in the narrative. Indirectly via the works of anc...

Combining fictional characterisation and factual research Alan Lloyd asks who were these people who lived in Pompeii and what were their lives like in those last days before the disaster? Alan Lloyd, an acclaimed historian and novelist, breathes life into the ghosts that haunt the empty streets, quiet courtyards and silent rooms of Pompeii while stirring the imagination of everyone who has seen the well-preserved ruins of the ancient city. Through the eyes of Taras, Lloyd's imaginatively r...

Pyrrhus was a Greek general and statesman of the Hellenistic era. He was king of the Greek tribe of Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house (from c. 297 BC), and later he became king of Epirus and Macedon. He was one of the strongest opponents of early Rome. Some of his battles, though successful, cost him heavy losses, from which the term Pyrrhic victory was coined.Pyrrhus and his campaign in Italy was effectively the only chance for Greece to check the advance of Rome towards domin...

The First Persian Empire was a country of the Achaemenid dynasty, based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. Ranging at its greatest extent from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, it was larger than any previous empire in history. This book describes conquests of the greatest Persian emperors, Cyrus the Great, Darius I and Xerxes I and the expansion of their country. Contents: Extent of the Empire. Climate and Productions. Character, ...

Marc Antony (Marcus Antonius) lived between 83 and 30 B.C. A supporter of Julius Caesar, Antony was part of the Second Triumvirate along with Octavian and Lepidus. After the breakup of the Triumvirate in 33 B.C. , Antony was defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium. He and his lover Cleopatra committed suicide in Alexandria in 30 B.C. This edition of The Life and Times of Marc Antony includes illustrations, and a table of contents.

How devastating viruses, pandemics, and other natural catastrophes swept through the far-flung Roman Empire and helped to bring down one of the mightiest civilizations of the ancient worldHere is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome’s powe...

'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 generals in the fourth century BC. In Books 6 to 10 of his monumental history of Rome, Livy deals with the period in which Rome recovered from its Gallic disaster to impose mastery over almost the entire Italian peninsula in a series of ever greater wars. Along with Papirius, Livy paints vivid po...

HistoryThe Secrets of Ancient Civilizations and Great Empires that Shaped Modern WorldCurious on the past and how it still influences the present and perhaps even the future? Interested on the role those ancient civilizations played in shaping the world, as we now know it? Ready to discover their origins, unique contributions, their influential figures, their secrets and other facts and trivia?If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you!...