Great Books
Parallel Lives (Roman)
Eight Romans, and the most consequential century in Roman history told through the men who lived it. Shakespeare read this book and took whole speeches out of it, almost unchanged.
Parallel Lives (Hellenistic)
The hundred and fifty years after Alexander produced the wildest careers in ancient history, and nobody wrote them up better. This is the least read and most surprising volume of...
Parallel Lives (Greek)
Nine Greeks, written up by a man who would rather tell you about a scar or an offhand joke than a battle. Biography as we practise it starts here.
The Jewish War
A Jewish general who ended up writing for the other side, took the emperor's family name, and produced the only surviving eyewitness account of the war he had fought in....
Letters from a Stoic
A man who advised Nero, owned half of Italy, and wrote the finest Latin ever written about how little you need. Read him with your guard up. He gets through...
The Aeneid
Rome's national poem, written by a man who appears to have believed almost nothing the empire said about itself. On his deathbed he asked for it to be burned.