(Part 2) Best ancient civilizations history books according to redditors
We found 3,714 Reddit comments discussing the best ancient civilizations history books. We ranked the 1,180 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Keys has a great chapter about Justinian's plague in his book Catastrophe.
He subscribes to the theory that that plague in particular came from Africa, but the concept is the same. Basically, plague (Y. pestis) exists in several natural "reservoirs" around the world. These reservoirs consist of rodents such as wild gerbils that are: a) highly resistant to the effects of Y. pestis but nonetheless propagate the disease and b) are solitary and do not often come into contact with other susceptible rodents and/or primates.
The spreading of the disease of course comes from the fleas, who become infected when they feed on the infected members of the reservoir. Worse, the effect of the plague on fleas is that they can't process food properly, so they panic and feed on everything in sight, hastening the spread of the disease.
So how do outbreaks happen? Well, during periods of extreme weather, the territory of these reservoir gerbils (or whatever) can be pushed into new areas. This may cause the spread of the disease to a more invasive species, like the black rat. Rats have no problem infringing on human living spaces, so when rats hitch a ride along trade routes, such as with goods coming from Africa to the Byzantine Empire during the time of Justinian, you see the spread of the disease to areas other than the source of the plague reservoirs themselves. To make matters worse, Justinian was working to reconquer the lost Western Roman Empire, and also dealing with the Persians under Khusrau at the same time, so that particular plague spread to those areas, too.
Note that it seems Justinian's plague did in fact affect African port cities along the trade route, as well. I am less certain about the effects on China that the Black Death plague had, but this is nonetheless a relevant counterpart.
Edit: clarity
Because by the time of Constantine's conversion, Christianity was no longer an obscure cult made up of subversive elements from the lower classes, but was firmly entrenched among the class of urban professionals and rising new military and bureaucratic officials that made up a very influential chunk of the Empire's demographics.
The Crisis of the Third Century brought substantial social and cultural changes to the Roman Empire. Most notably, it brought a rising tide of "new men" from outside the traditional upper classes of the empire to prominence. Their avenue to power was primarily through the military, for the Crisis was a series of divisive and devastating civil wars between self-proclaimed emperors:
> For the Roman Empire was saved by a military revolution. Seldom has a society set about cutting out the dead wood in its upper classes with such determination. The senatorial aristocracy was excluded from military commands in about 260. The aristocrats had to make way for professional soldiers who had risen from the ranks. These professionals recast the Roman army.
> ...
> The soldiers and officers [who fought in the Danubian campaigns], who had seemed so raw to the Mediterranean aristocrats of a previous age, emerged as heroes of the imperial recovery of the late third and early fourth centuries...The army was an artesian well of talent. By the end of the third century, its officers and administrators had ousted the traditional aristocracy from control of the empire.
These "new men" formed the basis of a new imperial bureaucratic and military administration that would preside over a recovery that spanned the fourth century. Their rise heralded the dawn of a new system of advancement that relied more on merit than birth. As a result, men from disparate regions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions could rise to high positions with the administration.
This new culture and influx of talent allowed for men with Christian beliefs to quickly entrench themselves into the highest levels of Roman governance once Constantine converted to Christianity.
> The reign of Constantine, especially the period from 324-337, saw the final establishment of a new "aristocracy of service" at the top of Roman society...After the conversion of Constantine in 312, the emperors and the majority of their courtiers were Christians. The ease with which Christianity gained control of the upper classes of the Roman empire in the fourth century was due to the revolution that had placed the imperial court at the centre of a society of "new" men, who found it comparatively easy to abandon conservative beliefs in favour of the new faith of their masters.
So now the question is how Christianity was so appealing to this wave of "new men" (outside of how conversion allowed them to rise more quickly in the court of a Christian emperor).
Christianity offered a few distinct advantages compared to other religions at the time, chiefly its culture of community, exclusivity, and egalitarianism. Anyone could become a Christian no matter their ethnic, economic, or former religious background. And once you were a Christian, you were part of an exclusive community, of which many were men from well-off economic backgrounds and invested their wealth in improving that community. Thus, Christianity appealed to men who felt they lacked a social identity, and/or were trying to carve out a new niche for themselves in post-Crisis Roman society; and since the turmoil of the Crisis uprooted many people and produced a new group of ambitious, talented social risers, Christianity found itself with a wealth of new converts.
> The Church was also professedly egalitarian. A group in which there was 'neither slave nor free' might strike an aristocrat as utopian, or subversive. Yet in an age when the barriers separating the successful freedman from the declasse senator were increasingly unreal, a religious group could take the final step of ignoring them. In Rome the Christian community of the early third century was a p[lace where just such anomalies were gathered and tolerated: the Church included a powerful freedman chamberlain of the emperor; its bishop was the former slave of that freedman; it was protected by the emperor's mistress, and patronized by noble ladies.
> For men whose confusions came partly from no longer feeling embedded in their home environment, the Christian Church offered a drastic experiment in social living...
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> The Christian Church suddenly came to appeal to men who felt deserted. At a time of inflation, the Christians invested large sums of liquid capital in people; at a time of increased brutality, the courage of Christian martyrs was impressive; during public emergencies, such as plague or rioting, the Christian clergy were shown to be the only united group in town, able to look after the burial of the dead and to organize food-supplies...Plainly, to be a Christian in 250 brought more protection from one's fellows than to be a civis romanus.
> ...
> What marked the Christian Church off, and added to its appeal, was the ferociously inward-looking quality of life...the wealth of the community returned to the members of the community alone, as part of the "loving-kindness of God to His special people.
> ...
> The appeal of Christianity still lay in its radical sense of community: it absorbed people because the individual could drop from a wide impersonal world into a miniature community, whose demands and relations were explicit.
Once Christians gained access to the highest levels of government via the "new men", and those "new men" carved out their own position among the elite classes of the Roman Empire, Christianity continued the process of adapting to the new culture of the classical world. The Crisis of the Third Century had brought more than civil war - foreign powers hostile to the Empire, such as Sassanid Persia and the Germanic tribes along the Rhine, had taken advantage of the weakness of Roman borders and launched raids and invasions into imperial territory. The mood of the apparent collapse of the "civilized", classical world took deep hold across the Roman Empire, and the narrative of Christianity was well-suited to adapt to this new mood:
> Hence the most crucial development of these centuries: the definitive splitting-off of the "demons" as active forces of evil, against whom men had to pit themselves. The sharp smell of an invisible battle hung over the religious and intellectual life of the Late Antique man...To men increasingly pre-occupied with the problem of evil, the Christian attitude to the demons offered an answer designed to relieve nameless anxiety: they focused this anxiety on the demons and at the same time offered a remedy for it. The devil was given vast but strictly-mapped powers. He was an all-embracing agent of evil in the human race; but he had been defeated by Christ and could be held in check by Christ's human agents.
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> The early fourth century was the great age of the Christian Apologists...They claimed that Christianity was the sole guarantee of [classical] civilization - that the best traditions of classical philosophy and the high standards of classical ethics could be steeled against barbarism only through being confirmed by the Christian revelation; and that the beleaguered Roman empire was saved from destruction only by the protection of the Christian God.
When Constantine very publicly converted to Christianity, he was inundated by a flood of Christian "new men" who desired his patronage either for their own advancement within the government or for the advancement of their community's interests under his rule. By surrounding himself with Christians, Constantine surrounded himself with Christian propaganda, and allowed that propaganda to spread throughout the empire. And because Christianity was already entrenched among the urban middle class, combined with the eastern empire (the focus of Constantine's power and attention) being considerably more urbanized and developed than the western empire, this led to the majority of the entire empire becoming firmly Christian from the bottom up, despite the resistance of the traditionalist pagan aristocracy:
> This prolonged exposure to Christian propaganda was the true "conversion" of Constantine. It began on a modest scale when he controlled only the under-Christianized western provinces; but it reached its peak after 324, when the densely Christianized Christianized territories of Asia Minor were united to his empire.
Constantine's nephew, Julian the Apostate, who became emperor after the death of Constantine's son Constantius II, was a firm pagan who sought to roll back Christian infiltration within the upper levels of Roman government. But his premature death on the battlefield in 363, only three years into his reign, smothered those plans in the crib. The new Christian domination of the Roman world was here to stay.
Source: The World of Late Antiquity, by Peter Brown (pub. 1971)
I encourage you to seek out further replies and sources to this question. My sole source is a secondary one, and an old one, despite being an extremely influential work in the historiography of the late Roman Empire.
Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization documents using quantified archaeology how the collapse of Roman hegemony devastated the economies in not just the ex-imperial West but also the still-imperial East. Coins, manufactured pottery, and other goods are all sharply less evident after the Fall; animal skeletons are smaller, and there's generally pretty consistent evidence all around of much lower standards of living, even in the areas that maintained Roman culture and governance.
A big reason: the loss of the network effects the stable Pax Romana gave to the entire region. The Roman economy was surprisingly specialized, because trade meant everyone didn't have to produce everything themselves. When the trade routes broke down, people had to become less specialized — and thus, less wealthy.
Pollice Verso, while visually appealing and a widely believed fact, isn't quite how the folks in the Flavian Amphitheater threw hands... the popular imagery is born of a painting of the same name from the late 1800s. Written history tells us that 'pollicem verte' and 'pollicem premer' were the rule of the day - to turn or to press the thumb, respectively... extended thumb for death, thumb in contact with the hand to issue a missio. This is seen here in a relief from the time. This is a very cursory and accessible site than can be a great first step on the adventurous road that is studying Roman history. And when you finally feel like getting elbow deep in the imperium romanum pick up this work (the same set Theodore Roosevelt purportedly read by the campfire during the Spanish-American War)... when you're done reading it pass it along to the next budding historian you meet.
Quick and dirty introduction in Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by Mortimer Adler.
https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Everybody-Difficult-Thought-Made/dp/0684838230
What are the best books on Hannibal (particularly ones that may have been overlooked)?
Personally I like Lazenby's Hannibal's War (for the academically inclined) and Dodge's Hannibal (for a general audience).
EDIT:
For those interested in learning more about Hannibal, here are my top picks from books actually on my book shelf:
And recommendations and from /u/gevemacd :
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3279/2769211423_33999bc152_b.jpg
http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Roman-Empire-Everymans-Library/dp/0307700763/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457158388&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=the+rise+and+fall+of+the+roman+empire+hard+cover
I scanned r/askhistorians for a minute and it seems that many people are recommending The Punic Wars by Adrian Goldsworthy.
Relevant books:
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
I would say in the period immediately following the Second Punic War.
Rome had just defeat it's greatest enemy, and would have no serious threats to it's existence for hundreds of years. The spoils from Carthage greatly enhanced the wealth of it's people (especially the elite), yet it was not quite to the point where decadence and corruption had completely overtaken the people.
The army was strong, and still owed loyalty to the state, instead of individual generals in the post-Marian reforms era. Of course, some of Rome's greatest commanders (namely, Scipio Africanus) were still alive and kicking. Territories in Spain, Sicily, and North Africa were in the process of annexation (so, perhaps dock a few points for stability there).
It would be quick turnaround in a few years, once the Glory-Seekers (i.e., Marius, Sulla, the Triumvirates), came around. But at the end of the 3rd century BCE, things were going pretty well for Roma.
I'd really disagree with the "Pax Romana" period of Augustus' reign being the best. To me, even that period looked nice on the outside, but was rotten to the core. We have a tendency to romanticize the early empire, I think. Check out Ronald Syme's book, The Roman Revolution. One might make the argument that it's a bit dated at this point, but I think it gives some very interesting insight into the Caesars, and helps de-romanticize them.
The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan is great, although with that war you can read about straight from Thucydides as well (I have this book). These books are about the war, not sieges.
The other stuff I picked up in various textbooks and classes, I couldn't give you an exact book, sorry.
I wish I had a good book to recommend to you about the history of siege warfare, but I don't.
According to this book it was probably Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
This is the abridged version.
If you feel brave have a look at the unabridged set(warning it's very very long):
Penguin Unabridged Version
> The last of which was a gradual morphing into a mostly-but-not-completely Germanic society in place of a mostly-but-not-completely Greco-Latin society.
It didn't morph into "A Germanic society". It collapsed over a relatively short period and was replaced by a patchwork of several such societies, which established themselves in its ruins. That's a fallen empire by any definition. See Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005) for a solid refutation of the "gradualist" idea that "the Empire never fell it just changed". The consensus is that the speed and extent of the impact of the fall varied from place to place, with the northern and fringe regions that were effectively propped up by the Army and administration and an economy dependent on them going far more "Mad Max" than Italy or Africa. But Ward-Perkins shows pretty conclusively that the post-War tendency to downplay the fall as kind of gentle "morphing" is essentially nonsense, as a mass of archaeological and documentary evidence indicates.
Dude, you're worried about what other people think of you. Don't be. It's not something under your control. Time spent letting it bother you is time wasted. You will never be in control of what other people think. Some will like you, some will dislike you, most won't really care. That's how life is.
"I often marvel how it is that though each man loves himself beyond all else, he should yet value his own opinion of himself less than that of others. ... So much more regard have we for our neighbours' judgement of us than for our own." -- Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
From the /r/AskHistorians book wiki:
If you enjoyed Origins and especially the Duat scenes, you might enjoy reading more about it. Eric Hornung’s The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife is a good starting point. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is also very good. It has photos of the papyrus with the translation in English. (Amazon links for convenience, try to find them at a library of course.)
Nefertiti’s afterlife is the most true to the Egyptian conception of the Elysian Fields. It perfectly captures what Egyptologists find captivating about this stuff. If it grabs you on a visceral level, you might be an Egyptologist at heart. Feel free to ask me for new or different sources.
Interesting article, and an important topic that is not usually well understood when people talk about the issues we're facing in regards to our overuse of resources which replenish on timescales well above human lifetimes. I recommend Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations for anyone who is interested in a more in depth introduction to this topic.
Here are a few specifically about the so-called Dark Ages:
The Inheritance of Rome
Barbarians to Angels
The World of Late Antiquity
The classic image of the Roman shield, or scutum, is one of the most iconic images of the Roman Empire. It was one of the biggest contributors to the success of Roman legions on the battlefield due to its invaluability in defense and offense. Along with the short sword gladius, the two could take down the most formidable opponent.
It comes from the standard army shield during the Roman Empire. This shield has evolved drastically overtime - at first, it was oval and flat because early Romans (pre-Samnite Wars) fought in phalanx formation. These shields would look similar to the Greek [shield](http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NjAwWDYwMA==/$(KGrHqF,!oUFB0VfBy50BQeGpUJT6w~~60_35.JPG?set_id=880000500F). However, after the Romans adopted their classic manipular system, these shields became obsolete. They slowly evolved to a larger, elliptical shield (probably similar to the Samnites) and then to a more cylindrical shield that almost entirely protected the user. This is the classic shield you are thinking of. This shield was in use during the best (opinion) times of the Romans, from the middle Republic to the middle Empire. The scutum of the Late Roman Empire was elliptical and flat. I'm actually not sure why they changed it, as my knowledge of the Late Empire is not as thorough, but if I could guess (so take this with a grain of salt) it would be because the Romans relied heavily upon mercenaries later on. Perhaps the later shield was more akin to what the mercenaries were used to, I don't know, or maybe there was a heavy Eastern influence since the Eastern Roman Empire became the focal point in the Mediterranean. I should let someone answer that.
So this is cool - each legion had its own symbol, and this symbol would be on their shields. During the Battle of Thapsus, Caesar's fifth legion withstood and repelled an elephant charge and was rewarded with the symbol of the elephant. This would give great pride to all members of the legion and be a reminder of when they performed at their bests, so they would put this symbol on their shields. Another example is that some shields have a wreath on them, the Roman symbol for victory. So this guy, on his shield is a wreath, meaning victory, and a bull, which is a common symbol of many Roman legions, like Caesar's third legion. These shields were very important to a Roman warrior and were highly decorated to signify the strength of the Romans and give pride to the man wearing it. Hope that helps!
Sources - primarily Roman Warfare (Smithsonian History of Warfare)
edit* cause my jokes aren't funny, also sources
Great read on this for anyone interested: https://www.amazon.com/Early-Chinese-Empires-History-Imperial/dp/0674057341
Complete novice? Extra Credits.
Seconding the Podcasts from Carlin, "Punic Nightmares" and Duncan's History of Rome and Born Yesterday. Seriously, Duncan is amazing. Major history hard-on.
Also, the History Channel has a pretty fun website, and there aren't any pawnshop aliens American Trucker-Pickers.
And if you want to read something that was written a tad earlier, Appian's histories cover the Second Punic War in several sections: The Spanish Wars, The Hannibalic War in Europe, and The Punic War and Numidian Affairs about Scipio in Africa (he also writes about the First Punic War), Livy deals with the Second Punic War in chapters 21-25 and 26-30, Polybius uses the Punic Wars to extol (and for us, explain) Roman virtues and institutions, and Plutarch gives two Generals treatment in his Parallel Lives, Fabius and Flaminius.
Modern books, I liked Adrian Goldsworthy's [The Punic Wars] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Punic-Wars-Adrian-Goldsworthy/dp/0304352845), and had WAY too much fun reading this book about Scipio and this book about Hannibal in tandem.
Oh... after you're done with all/any of that you might want to go buy Rome Total War and play as the Scipii. Extra points if you download Europa Barbarorum. Rome 2 is out and presumably awesome (and EB2)
The class ended its reading with the conclusion of the British campaign; but that was the point at which all of Gaul rose up behind him... so I finished it in English. I was never good at getting the right ending of anything in Latin, and all the pronouns and tenses are entirely within the endings. Knowing the Latin roots of words, though, that stuck with me. And the slide shows our classics teacher had of ancient roman archeological sites were incredible. He visited Italy and Greece every summer, and made his own slides. The stories from antiquity he told with the slides made classical history come alive for me in a way that enriched my life.
As for books: I'd recommend reading Caesar's book. It's a cunning piece of pro-ceasar propaganda, but the military details are quite accurate, because one of the primary ways to become a Roman citizen was to serve in the army, and this portion of the citizenry was the memoir's target audience. If you're looking for a more scholarly work on the Roman Army, this is the one I read in college for a War & Ancient Society class. It has a very high level of detail, to match its very high price, but it is also quite good.
I had the chance to finish fully reading Roman Warfare by Adrian Goldsworthy, and I want to start off by saying that if you are even remotely interested in how the Roman military operated, read this book. Doesn't matter if you're interested in Rome before city states were a thing, whether you're into the Principate, or whether you want to know how the Roman army
degeneratedevolved into its later stages preceding the collapse of the Roman Empire. Whichever way you look, this book has you covered - and, of course, I can't help but mention that I really, REALLY like Goldsworthy's style. That might have something to do with it. I'm going to probably work on a re-read when I'm done with my current book, which happens to be...[Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization], by Richard Miles. This one is a bit dryer and FAR longer than Roman Warfare, but VERY cool, too! I'm only a little ways in (maybe 20%?), but Miles gives some GREAT background on the founding of Carthage, exploring the history of Tyre as well to give context to the founding of the great city. Which, I might add, I firmly believe should be rebuilt. Make the inner buildings a mixture of modern and Carthaginian style, get the plastered walls that shine in the sun, get the temple and the palace and the INCREDIBLE harbour...it would make Tunisia one hell of a place to visit :D
Firstly, sorry I cannot give you a detailed answer here. I did ancient Chinese as one half of my undergraduate degree, but haven't read anything recently (i.e. years).
However, I can direct you to some sources that I read which really helped inform me about the late Eastern Han/Three Kingdoms era.
In regards to some of your questions, I'll take a shot at answering from memory (sources as above basically!)
> if Dong Zhuo and others are so bent on being that powerful, why would they stop at Prime Minister?
Dong Zhuo was thought to have been preparing to name himself Emperor under a new dynasty. But even besides that, we did try to rise higher than Prime Minister. He named himself Imperial Father, as in Father to the Son of Heaven (the Emperor Xian). This is important, as in Chinese political society where filial piety was important, the Emperor was the father of the empire, with only heaven as his superior. By naming himself the Imperial Father, he was de facto naming himself above the Emperor.
In regards to regional warlords accepting the legitimacy of the Han Emperor while fighting each other, you need to understand where the political authority was seen to have originated, which was the The Mandate of Heaven (mostly). It was more politically difficult to get the rest of the empire to accept that you had gained the Mandate and the Han had lost it than to simply kidnap the emperor and issue decrees in his name (as Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao did). By acting 'under' Han imperial authority, warlords in control of the Emperor had more legitimacy to their actions than without him. This was made easier by the fact that the majority of later emperors in the Eastern Han were child emperors, who were the sovereign in name only, with court officials or eunuchs with real authority governing the state in the Emperor's name.
Apologies I could not be more detailed, I have not read any of my books on this in a long time. But I think once my thesis is done, this question has knocked enough nostalgia into me to revisit them!
If you are really serious:
http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Roman-Empire-Everymans/dp/0679423087
and
http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Roman-Empire-Volumes/dp/067943593X/ref=pd_sim_b_1
I have the Penguin Great Ideas edition translated by Maxwell Staniforth. I liked it. The translation flowed well and was easy to read.
There is a newer translation by Gregory Hays I haven't read this one, but this review gives a couple of side by side comparisons.
If you only read one book on the subject it should be Robert Grant's Augustus to Constantine. It's a tremendous piece of scholarship, in-depth without being overwhelming or boring, and Grant does an excellent job of situating the rise of Christianity against the background of the larger Roman Empire.
Other suggestions:
Henry Chadwick's The Early Church is a classic survey, but it's a bit dated now. Still a very accessible introduction, cheaper and shorter than the Grant.
Peter Brown is, in my opinion, one of the greatest historians who's ever lived and he has written extensively on Late Antique Christianity. For this specific topic, I'd suggest The World of Late Antiquity or The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity. The advantage of Brown is that he's also a fantastic writer.
Another interesting source is Robert Louis Wilken's *Christians as the Romans Saw Them. While it won't give you a full survey of Christianity's rise, it provides the perspective of pagan thinkers reacting to the strange, barbarous, troubling religion that is Christianity. This one is more of a supplement to the other listed works, but I think it helps really understand Christianity against the religio-cultural background of the Roman Empire.
Finally, the great primary source on the subject is Eusebius's *History of the Church. Obviously Eusebius, the 4th century bishop, doesn't match up to modern standards of historical accuracy, but you still get a comprehensive picture of the rise of Christianity that's pretty darn fun to read. Read with a critical eye, it's a terrific source. Also, it's available for free online. (also Eusebius basically invented documentary history, so that's kinda neat)
If you want more recommendations, or want more specific suggestions, I'd be glad to help out. My strongest recommendation are the Grant and the Brown.
For starters, there really isn't such a thing as a "middle-class citizen" in the Roman Empire. Roman social classes did not work that way, and wealth actually had less bearing on your existence than social status, inherited mainly from your ancestors.
The best resource for this sort of thing would be Jerome Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome. Carcopino was the premier classical social historian of his day, and most of what he says is still very much to date. To say more than that would honestly not get you anywhere. The lives of citizens varied pretty wildly depending on social status, wealth, and of course location (life within the city would be very different from life in certain provinces, which would differ even more from each other). A very few things can be said in general, however. The vast majority of the Roman Empire was enjoying the benefits of peace, a blessing that was not lost on them after nearly a hundred years of civil wars and nearly a hundred and fifty years of political strife within the noble orders. The reign of Augustus was also blessed with an extreme degree of wealth, which Rome and her empire had not seen the likes of before, and which was even more welcome considering the extreme deprivation that most people had suffered duing the destructive civil wars. Among the lower social orders the climate of Augustus' reign from the period after the War of Actium was incredibly welcome, providing great social freedom and opportunity, as well as unheard-of wealth. The upper social orders, mainly the survivors of the nobility, were a mixed bag. Most of the remaining prominent members of the senate and nobility had originally been lowlives under Caesar or Octavian, and had joined them because they had hoped that supporting them would help pay off their massive debts from extravagance. The rest were the few survivors of the old nobility that had been sure to kiss up to the dictators, as well as aspiring tyrants like Pompey and Crassus. Since the beginning of the 1st Century, B.C. the political climate at Rome had increasingly been one of power slipping more and more firmly into the hands of private individuals, and as a result there were throughout the century great purges, either through proscriptions or wars, of the members of the nobility. As a result, there was great dissatisfaction with Augustus' seizure of power among the nobles, but for them Rome was rather like a police state, since any disloyal actions would result in Praetorians knocking on their doors. These attitudes are echoed by Virgil and Livy, who had mixed feelings about Augustus, by Cicero (for example, in his Philippics--although all of this is technically before Augustus' reign, it still very much applies, as the loss of political freedom had already been cemented in place following Caesar's victory over the Pompeians), and even by Horace, who owed Augustus and Maecenas everything but who nevertheless could not quite bring himself to agree with the autocracy. For more on the destruction of the Roman political system, see Ronald Syme's groundbreaking work, The Roman Revolution, which was the first study (on the eve of Hitler's declaration of war, to whom Augustus is implicitly compared) to challenge the old Victorian view of Augustus as the "benign dictator."
While Gibbon is a lot of fun to read, he is in no way authoritative, his work is over 200 years old after all. I think there may have been some new research since then. :)
There are always the Romans/Greeks themselves of course, Tacitus, Livy, Seutonius, Plutarch, Polybius etc. but they can be a bit overwhelming for a newcomer.
Here's some newer stuff.
M. Carry A History of Rome Came out in the mid 1960s. Meant for undergrads. Very readable.
Robin Lane Fox The Classical World This came out in 2006 and is meant for the educated general reader. Very well written and sourced. A breeze to read and as a bonus you get the Greeks too.
Michael Grant was an excellent classicist who wrote for the educated general public. A great writer, always a fun read and you can often find some of his works at used bookstores.
Ronald Symes The Roman Revolution This is for once you've got a few books under your belt because the names and terms are going to come at you fast. You have to know your Claudius from your Clodius. An account of how Augustus managed to do what Caesar couldn't.
It's a fascinating history. I've been reading it for 25 years, I envy you your first plunge.
The historian Adrian Goldsworthy has made quite a successful career out of writing (normally very good) books about Rome and her military- depending on which era, I'm sure you can find something in his published works that could suit. Personally I'm very fond of In The Name of Rome: The Men Who Won The Roman Empire, which examines the changing nature of Roman warmaking using specific personalities (starting with Fabius Maximus and Claudius Marcellus in the Second Punic War, he works his way through to Belisarius and the Battle of Dara).
It's a good read for historiographies, but I'm sure ancient historians have gone past some of his theories. Nevertheless, it's still regarded as a classic.
If you want more modern books, check out: Peter Brown's World of Late Antiquity and Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire
There are different theories on the fall, you could probably go through an entire library of them. I just picked selections I had from class, as I think these were more readable.
One theory is that Noah's Flood is actually the flooding of what is now the Black Sea. It was originally a fresh water lake fed with meltwater from the north into what is now Russia. As the ice age ended and sea levels rose, the Mediteranean sea found its way through the thin strip of land separating the Black Sea (lake?) from the ocean. At first it was a trickle, and it grew into a torrent that would dwarf Niagra and could probably be heard for many miles away.
The freshwater lake turned salty, and all its fish died. And "Noah" saw the waters rising, and packed all his family plus a breeding stock of his animals (probably a pair of dogs a pair of goats/sheep and a pair of chickens or something like that) and tried to ride it out as the sea filled and his homeland was swallowed up.
Archaeological evidence shows that the people who used to live in that area fled at about this time and reappeared in the Italian alps, far from the water.
Sauce: Noah's Flood
I point you to Bryan Ward-Perkins, history professor of oxford, and one of the main proponents of collapse theory, because though the literary evidence shows a peaceful transition, the archaeological evidence shows a very destructive collapse in complex society.
In fact, modern scholarship is shifting back towards the, as you put it, "barbarians over running western europe" because archaeological evidence has multiplied a hundred fold and confirms this collapse in ways the earlier (and purely literary based) theories of Peter Brown and Pirenne didn't.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Rome-And-Civilization/dp/0192807285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343195688&sr=8-1&keywords=the+fall+of+rome+and+the+end+of+civilization
Also, adopting roman customs does not mean they were roman, any more than the holy roman empire was roman itself because of the name. The hallmarks of Roman society, centralized bureaucracy, a standing military, taxation and mediterrenean wide trade, all vanished, taking along with it the highly urbanized society that Rome was noted for, and replacing it with feudal and rural aristocracies with the bare vestiges of continuation, mostly in the guise of the church, but not the state.
Keep in mind too, the literary evidence also shows that the Germanic successor states in Italy and Gaul governed themselves under primarily their own Germanic customs and common law, as opposed to the populace who were subject to Roman law. Hardly the full integration you're implying.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Cannae or Trebia to help you out there. I'm more of a late antiquities Roman/Byzantine guy in terms of my knowledge base.
I would recommend Adrian Goldsworthy's Roman Warfare as one of the better non-technical history books on Roman warfare. And if you're looking for something a little more in my field and a book that I try to re-read every two years, I highly recommend How Rome Fell by the same author.
I know that I'm not answering your question, and I am sorry for it. Perhaps someone with a better knowledge base might help you with your question.
Hmmm...so many recommendations. First, you need to have a basic grasp of philosophy (particularly Aristotelian philosophy, which leads to Thomistic thought).
There are...so many more recommendations I could give, but working your way through these will take some time.
>My dislike more from the fact that Catholics seem to think that these views should be encoded in society's laws rather than that they hold them.
All of civil law ought to find its root cause in natural moral law. The Church uses not simply faith alone to defend Her claims, but also natural law. As such, there are certain Truths present (and observable) in natural law that should be reflected in our everyday behavior and legislated by the civil authority.
We believe in an objective right and an objective wrong: a defined good and a defined evil. The difficulty, I think, is getting people to see the same thing!
I would read "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" by Edward Luttwak. Here it is at Amazon
There's not much I can say that isn't said better in the reviews, but it's a great read and strikes an amazing balance between being too dense or too cursory. It seems perfectly tailored to your topic: he writes just as much about soft power (espionage and diplomacy) as he does about military organization and operations.
Here is the WSJ's review.
Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy: Mortimer J. Adler.
https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Everybody-Difficult-Thought-Made/dp/0684838230
I've had this book for over 20 years and have read it at least 3 times, highly recommend.
I believe it's the Maxwell Staniforth translation: http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Penguin-Great-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0143036270
And here's my abominable google query: http://books.google.com/books?id=WV7Teosv0bIC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=Think+of+your+many+years+of+procrastination;+how+the+gods+have+repeatedly+granted+you+further+periods+of+grace&source=bl&ots=qXCtL9JPyE&sig=JplnioGX2r2_lfO6Y0FnRWk27r0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FlVVVJ72KMKyoQTSnID4Bg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Think%20of%20your%20many%20years%20of%20procrastination%3B%20how%20the%20gods%20have%20repeatedly%20granted%20you%20further%20periods%20of%20grace&f=false
The best book I recommend is specifically called "Roman Battle Tactics" which comes from Osprey Publishing. The book comes in a short digestible form with great insights and graphics on the basic tactics used by the Romans during the late Republic and early empire.
https://ospreypublishing.com/roman-battle-tactics-109bc-ad313-pb
I would also recommend the book "In the name of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy. This one is definitely longer but focuses specifically on the great generals throughout Rome's history and the ways in which they wielded their armies.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Name-Rome-Empire-Phoenix/dp/0753817896
Start with the books of Adrian Goldsworthy, the author of many well regarded books on Roman history, including biographies and especially Roman military history.
Simon Baker's Ancient Rome is also a good "one volume" history of the Eternal City.
Finally, Peter Heather published a new history on the fall of Rome called The Fall of the Roman Empire a few years ago that received lots of praise. I haven't read this, but the reviews looked good.
Yep, Polybius was an eye-witness to the fall of Carthage during the 3rd Punic war. He was a Greek but worked for the Scipii family as a historian/chronicler. All his work must be tempered by the knowledge that he was essentially writing pro-Scipii propaganda but never the less he was an eye-witness and wrote a very sober account.
This book
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Fall-Carthage-265-146BC-PAPERBACKS/dp/0304366420
Is also good, tells a decent account of the punic wars, the author doesn't jump to too many conclusions and tries to set out a narrative based on the most reliable sources available.
I seriously enjoyed Luttwak's Great Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, although it is not about a general in particular, but more about how the Eastern Roman Empire managed to survive repeated invasions of horseback archers from Central Asia. Really nicely-written, and makes one think about how the evolution of technology and economics affect warfare and history in general.
I have this one myself, lying in my bag right this moment. It's a small little thing, and seems like the best edition of the book to carry around if you've got limited space.
My copy is dog-eared, frayed and puffy from exposure to rain water, but still holds up relatively well. It's a great book to just flip over whenever you've felt like you've lost your cool and need a moment to step back and relax. Marcus Aurelius had to deal with near constant illness, a motherfucking Germanic horde and the usual posse of sycophants who linger in the shadows of rulers. Compared to that, my problems are peanuts.
From my understanding, sulfur dioxide is toxic to any oxygen using organism and vice versa. That would include plant life. Reading the three Ward books is near the limit of my expertise, but while fact checking my post, I found that sulfur organisms inhabit the anoxic bottom on the Black Sea, which appears to have been a huge fresh water lake at the end of the last Ice Age, before the Mediterranean rose and flooded it with seawater. (Some consider this to be the basis of the Noah's Flood legend.) A phenomena called a chemocline occurs there. Above it is more oxygen and aerobic organisms, and below it is sulfur dioxide and that alternative biochemistry. I do not know if this occurs widely in ocean basins.
Here is book a read about that prehistoric flood
http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Scientific-Discoveries-Changed/dp/0684859203
I think most of the book still stands up to scrutiny. I may have read in this book that the Black Sea sometimes belches up huge clouds of sulfur dioxide, and this was one reason the Black Sea had a bad reputation with ancient mariners. But my memory now sometimes conflates such trivia.
The map that changed the world
The illustrated Longitude
Noah's Flood
The Hunt for Planet X: New Worlds and the Fate of Pluto
Definitely his scholarly articles. As for his translations, I'm not sure. I should try comparing a couple spells sometime. I can't do it now because I am away from home, where I have the Dover reprint of Budge, and maybe two copies of Faulkner. (One is a black hardcover from Barnes and Noble, the other is the giant one that also contains a reproducton of the Papyrus of Ani.
One nice thing about Budge is that, at least in the Dover reprint, there's a section with the hieroglyphs line-by-line, with a word-by-word translation, and his weird transliteration under that. I'm not sure how accurate Budge's hieroglyphic transcriptions were, but I wish Faulkner had transcriptions.
I also wish the Faulkner translation came in more portable sizes like Budge does.
Years ago, I saw a post in an egyptology forum somewhere that one should take one's Budge books, and put them in the closet for four years. During which time, one should learn and study as much as they can about Egyptology, getting themselves thoroughly grounded. Then, after that time, take the Budge books out of the closet. With that knowledge, the person should be able to notice where Budge goes wrong, where a newbie wouldn't.
I'm not sure how accurate that advice is, but it makes some sense to me, because I've experienced noticing where somebody goes wrong in some field of knowledge that I have learned about, that I wouldn't have noticed before.
Another issue with Budge, and probably the old-timey sources more generally, is a bias towards Christianity, trying to see Egyptian religion as some sort of proto-Christianity, rather than looking at Egyptian religion on its own terms.
Here is another Kemetic's take on it. I've been meaning to post this in a self-post on this subreddit as a "Not Bad Religion" post. Not sure if I should.
Well my source is the fact that there's no archaeological evidence for Rome's founding being 753 BC. You're asking me to prove a negative.
If you want to read up on the history of Rome, this is a fairly comprehensive text:
https://www.amazon.com/History-Rome-Down-Reign-Constantine/dp/0312383959/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492808749&sr=1-12&keywords=history+of+rome
This hardcover version of Gibbon's history (which does not cover the beginning of Rome) has an introduction in which they discuss Rome's founding as well:
https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Roman-Empire-Everymans-Library/dp/0307700763/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=
Again, you need to keep in mind that the same people who stated Rome was founded in 753 BC are the same people who thoroughly believed the myth of Romulus.
>Leo II/Charlemagne or John XII/Otto I.
Charlemagne (Charles/Carl the Great) ruled three kingdoms before declaring himself Emperor, and even then, with Pope Leo III's "approval." (It may have been at sword-point) And made the name Charles/Carl comes to mean something akin to Caesar in the hearts and minds of Europe. If you have any better candidates to claim the title of Emperor for themselves, put him or her forth.
Leo II was a Byzantine (aka Eastern Roman Empire) Emperor. Did you mean Pope Leo III who crowned Charlemagne and John XII who crowned Otto? Otto I was on good terms with the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII according to my sources who initially opposed him taking the title Emperor (until he married one of their daughters).
I've also heard of this book which might interest the OP. But yeah, if you're looking for a good book on Thomism, you can't go wrong with Feser.
If you're looking for an overview on the history of Roman warfare as well as a treatise on the Roman army's position in Roman society, I would recommend Adrian Goldsworthy's Roman Warfare. It can be a bit of a dry read, but it's extremely educational.
It covers just about every aspect of Roman warfare from the initial conquest of the Italian Peninsula through the Marian Reforms and on to the collapse of the empire.
I would recommend, "Roman Army at War" by Adrian Goldsworthy. I'm only half way through but it really is fascinating and very rigorous. http://www.amazon.com/The-Roman-Army-War-100/dp/0198150903
Nobody [here is obsessing.] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#Honours_and_awards) You're making a mountain out of a molehill. We're on a TRP forum. We are allowed to use ex[amples that stick an] (http://www.amazon.com/Kapital-Gateway-Edition-Skeptical-Reader/dp/089526711X)d stand out.
"Everybody knows the Dark Ages weren't really dark, right? Not so fast, counters archaeological journalist David Keys, maybe it's more than just a slightly judgmental metaphor."
I was introduced to the theory by an otherwise perfectly ordinary and sensible academic, and the first few times we met, I never quite understood why people started looking at their shoes and finding the nearby houseplants so interesting whenever he strayed from his very specific focus, until, well, boom: volcano.
Syme's The Roman Revolution is in my opinion still the orthodox text almost 100 years after it was written (1939 I think). There's several biographies of Caesar that come to mind, most powerfully Meier's and Goldsworthy's. Of these two I prefer Meier's, but I think Badian had a fairly scathing review of it published somewhere. The most recent thing I'm aware of (although I haven't read it) is Goodman's Rome's Last Citizen.
And of course there's always Plutarch, Appian, Cicero's letters (which contain some written by and to Cato). I don't think there's any substitute for starting with the ancient sources.
The only way Hannibal could have won doing that is if he caused the Romans to panic enough to immediately sue for peace. You have to remember that Hannibal was operating far from the Punic bases of supply with no reinforcements apart from what he received from local city states that he had conquered or otherwise persuaded to join him against Rome.
In ancient and medieval warfare sieges were often as bad or worse for the attacking army than they were for the defenders. Hannibal also did not posses a siege train and thus any attempt to invest Rome would take months if it were successful at all. He would be pinned down the entire time which would give the Romans a chance to attack him with their remaining armies. The reason why Hannibal was able to win his spectacular victories was because he always was able to pick when he gave battle. If he were stuck around Rome then he would not have that option and would risk losing everything.
Finally besieging Rome was not part of what we know of Hannibal's strategy. His strategy was to raid and pillage Rome's allied and confederated city states causing them to switch sides while defeating Rome's armies in the field. He hoped to cause Rome to sue for peace and thus allow Carthage to regain the position it held before the first Punic War.
This book is a great account of all three Punic Wars and talks about what Hannibal was trying to do and why he didn't march for Rome in the aftermath of the Battle of Cannae.
The standard textbook history right now appears to be The Romans: From Village to Empire.
Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic also still seems to be the standard introduction to that period (i.e. the time period of Imperator).
If you want to read about the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar/Augustus, it's hard to turn down Caesar: Life of a Colossus which is great for the general reader, alongside his Augustus: First Emperor of Rome.
He also writes pretty solid books on other major Roman figures, such as In the Name of Rome: The Men who won the Roman Empire.
If you want to get a pretty good introduction to Roman History, but more of what life was like for the average citizen, SPQR by Mary Beard is actually a good choice.
Older, but still solid, is Peter Garnsey's The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture which covers a lot of things Beard doesn't.
For the Roman army, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army is a solid introduction.
However you'll want to break that down into several books if you want to go deeper:
Roman Military Equipment by MC Bishop and JCN Coulston
The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD by Graham Webster
A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp
For the collapse of the Western Roman Empire I'd recommend both Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians combined with the more scholarly Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West.
For the forgotten half of Roman History, often mistakenly called the "Byzantine Empire," it's hard to cover with just one book, but Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society has become the standard reading. John Haldon's The Empire that would not Die covers the critical transition during the Islamic conquests thoroughly.
Of course I have to include books on the two IMO most overrated battles in Roman history on this list since that's what people love:
The Battle of the Teutoberg Wald: Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch
The Battle of Cannae: Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory is sort of the single book to read if you can only pick one. However, The Ghosts of Cannae is also good. But if you actually want to go really in depth, you need Gregory Daly's dry-as-the-Atacama book Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. When I say dry as the Atacama, I mean it, but it's also extraordinarily detailed.
I'd complement this with Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars.
For other interesting topics:
The Emergence of the Bubonic Plague: Justinian's Flea and Plague and the End of Antiquity.
Hadrian's Wall: Hadrian's Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy
Roman Architecture: Roman Architecture by Frank Sear (definitely a bit more scholarly but you can probably handle it)
I may post more in addendum to this list with further comments but I think I'm reaching the character count.
Permaculture: A Designer's Manual is considered the bible for permaculture because of how comprehensive it is and how much information is packed into that book. It won't explain all of the effective strategies for different climates that we've developed over the last 30 years but I would definitely start there for the foundation. Then move on to books on topics that are specific to a particular topic within permaculture design.
​
My Recommendations:
There is a public domain translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations available on MIT
The translation used here is by Maxwell Staniforth It's a very nice book with lots of helpful quotations, and highly relevant to NoFap. I suggest it.
The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward N. Luttwak
Discusses the military, diplomatic and cultural strategies the Eastern Empire used to survive.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Strategy-Byzantine-Empire/dp/0674062078
Perry Link is always a good read, he wrote Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities. Even if it's rather old, it's still a basic academic book that dissects early 20th century popular fiction against all odds that are placed against it in China (i.e. of no literary value etc.). I guess you best get it at your library.
Many praise Shanghai as the city that transformed itself from a small fishing village to a metropolis. Marie-Claire Bergère shows otherwise, it is one of the best histories on Shanghai you can get.
I often had trouble understanding ancient Chinese society and how it worked. Mark Edward Lewis gives a very good introduction there, also written in a very nice style.
What I still want to read is Douglas (Doug) Guthrie's, Social Connections in China (2002), as it researches how guanxi works.
Soon there's a book coming out on "Leftover Women" by Leta Hong Fincher, which is also on my very long To-read-list.
"Factory Girl's" is worth a read indeed, I loved it (although the author's personal experience was sometimes interrupting the main narrative too much).
erikmyster, thx for the tips above, I didn't know the titles...
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (amazon.com) is probably the single most depressing book I've read in the past 10 years. On the time span of about 100 to 200 years we (the 7-11 billion of us) are pretty much screwed by the agricultural soil erosion issue alone.
The books that really shaped my 'model' of how it wall went down are:
Romans: The Roman Army at War 100BC - 200AD
Greek: Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities
No, it really did fall.
See The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Ward-Perkins.
Roman Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Briton all had significant urban centers. These all disappeared after the barbarian conquests. Rome was a city of over a million people in it's heyday. It's population collapsed to less than 50,000. The grand buildings were turned into stone quarries.
London had a population of 60,000...and was almost completely deserted after the Saxon conquests.
That same story was written over and over again across urban centers across the Roman empire. The population dispersed, or killed, or enslaved by the Germanic or Hunnic invaders.
The Peloponnesian War, by Donald Kagan. It does an excellent job at explaining the context and the factors which led to the conflict, and paints the protagonist vividly. It's also not short on maps.
While you are at it, don't miss his lessons, which are available free on the net.
Ronald Syme's Roman Revolution would be my 'scholarly 'recommendation.
Chronicle of the Roman Republic/Empire would be my recommendation for a true introductory look and for use as a quick reference when reading more in depth texts, plus its pretty.
A good middle of the road intro text to the republic although the translation is a little clunky
This book also comes highly recommended but I haven't read it myself.
"Why you must be prepared". book 1: http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Roman-Empire-Everymans/dp/0679423087 book 2: http://www.amazon.com/Titanic-Echo-Dying-Confession-Aroich/dp/1453650903 book 3: http://sciblogs.co.nz/open-parachute/tag/mars-polar-lander/ book 4: http://www.amazon.com/Bay-Pigs-CIA-Secret-Invasion/dp/1875284982 book 5: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Depression-America-1929-1941/dp/0812923278
Roman warfare: http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Warfare-Smithsonian-History/dp/0060838523/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409401487&sr=1-9
roman generals: http://www.amazon.com/Name-Rome-Roman-Empire-Phoenix/dp/0753817896/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409401487&sr=1-7
roman military: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Roman-Army/dp/0500288992/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409401487&sr=1-8
>is still bought into the belief that all socialism is bad.
you are so naive, son. the only place socialism has a good track record is the Israeli (kibbutzes (communes), and those are very small and now falling apart because people want iPods, not socialism.
>Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. ~~ Economist Thomas Sowell of Stanford University, winner of the National Humanities Medal.
...
>we just had an argument about separation of church and state which he said "the first amendment doesn't guarantee separation of church and state."
Your dad is right. The 'separation of church and state' phrase comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a friend. The First Amendment means that America shall have no official church in the sense that the UK's church is the Church of England, and Sweden's church is officially Lutheran.
>when i mentioned the dark ages about how having a religious government he actually said "they called it the dark ages because there was no light, because a volcano erupted and there was ash in the air for years."
Your dad is wrong. It was called the Dark Ages because the Roman Empire collapsed. The Romans controlled much of Europe, and their infrastructure took centuries to rebuild. the church did not 'cause' the Dark Ages.
But ca. 500 AD, at the beginning of the dark ages, there was a massive volcano eruption that some scholars believe caused worldwide disruption in weather patterns and made things worse in Europe. So it's possible that your dad has confused two different things. http://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Modern-Civilization/dp/0345408764/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330794152&sr=8-2
There s actually a book on that phenomenon
(weird weather over two years)
https://www.amazon.ca/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Modern-Civilization/dp/0345408764
If you are looking to get handle on the Aristotle metaphysical worldview first, which is incredibly helpful since Aquinas builds on it, I recommend the fairly short book Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. The book is only 200 pages and is written by Mortimer Adler, a renowned polymath and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago (who actually ended up becoming Catholic before he died).
In fact, while u/Suppa-time recommends Feser's Aquinas, which is an absolutely great recommendation, I found reading Aristotle for Everybody first was enormously helpful and that I was able to hit the ground running when I picked up Feser's book.
Thank you! I believe this is what you’re asking about.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volumes 1-3, Volumes 4-6 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307700763/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_LstDDbYWAMCHZ
Assuming you read in English and are interested in the history of some of the sites, I suggest reading this book before you go:
http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Rome-Rise-Fall-Empire/dp/1846072840
It has a nice pace to it if you're into Roman history and will give you an idea of what happened at various places, or even might spark some new ideas on what you want to see in and around Rome. If I could do it again, I'd have read this or something like it before my first visit to Rome. If the history interests you, then you end up getting a lot more out of the sightseeing than just being out looking at stuff.
The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han is a good introduction to the subject. It also is the first of a series of great books on the history of Imperial China that are written by scholars but meant for a (somewhat more) general audience.
I'm reading Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of An Empire by Simon Baker right now. It's a great book!
http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Rome-Rise-Fall-Empire/dp/1846072840
Thanks! That gave me a starting point, and led me to this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Egyptian-Book-Dead-Going-Forth/dp/0811864898
From one of the reviewers:
> This version, I understand, is the best new one and has the most accurate translation. The "Book of the Dead" most commonly seen is the one translated by Wallis Budge in the 19th Century. This new book is a newer translation, and the pictures line up with the words, as the papyrus roll used to translate from was more complete than the one Budge used, as I understand from the book's forward.
Unfortunately, none of the sellers ship to the US...Edit: nevermind, I found one =)
If you are interested in erosion and desertification, you might enjoy the book "Dirt" by David Montgomery. It's written for the general public, and it's fascinating. http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/0520272900/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421884885&sr=8-1&keywords=dirt
Read the Maxwell Staniforth translation of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations". Here is a link.
Beyond that, always live at the edge of your comfort zone - wherever that is for you. Don't get caught in the trap of building a life of safety and escapism. Identify who you want to be and what you want for your life and go after it. You'll know you're on the right path when you're scared as shit half the time while drawing upon inner resources to make it happen anyway.
What you are essentially doing is cultivating character which is one of the greatest things you can do.
And don't skip the Meditations book. Read it.
For the Punic Wars the book by Goldsworthy (“Fall of Carthage”) is a must read. Goldsworthy is a keen writer that knows how to captivate his reader.
The Constitutio Antoniniana which granted Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire was issued in 212 AD and there is quite a lot of Roman history after that. Soon follows the so called “crisis of the 3rd century” between 235 and 284 AD throughout which the empire was shaken by internal as well as external problems. Next comes Late Antiquity, a period which has attracted a lot of scholarly attention in recent decades. It saw some huge changes like Christianity’s rise to dominance or the final partition of the empire into a western and eastern half that you mentioned. And while the western part already disappeared throughout the 5th century the Eastern Roman Empire would survive for a long time further. The rise of the first Islamic caliphate in the 7th century AD cost it much of its territory and caused further transformations. This surviving remnant of the Roman Empire, now centred around Constantinople, is usually called the Byzantine Empire. Its eventful history would continue through the entire Middle Ages until 1453 AD when it was finally conquered by the Ottomans. So all in all there is more than a millennium of further Roman history to cover.
There are quite a lot of books that go into further detail about the different periods of Byzantine history but for the start those two general introductions should probably suffice. Of course you can always ask for more. I hope this helps!
Speaking of redpill reading, I feel the need to shout out Jack Donovan here. Two of his books, "The Way of Men" and "Becoming a Barbarian" have been absolutely revolutionary for me. These are dangerous books, full of dangerous ideas. The former one, in particular, is an excellent primer in masculine virtue. I bet I've given half a dozen copies away. Read them, learn them, commit them to memory. Also recommended: "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius and "Letters from a Stoic" by the one and only Seneca.
Catastrohpe is a fascinating book that describes it all in some detail. I read it about twelve years ago. It was Krakatoa. This researcher has (as I recall) nearly definitive proof.
I'm really enjoying this one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Rome-Rise-Fall-Empire/dp/1846072840
For a long time, the greatest minds in science worked to reconcile their observations of the earth with the events described in the Bible. This began to change in earnest during the first half of the 19th century. Many of the geologic features they extrapolated as evidence for a gobal deluge could be seen and understood in other terms: global glaciation that carved and bulldozed the landscape, depositing a confusion of mud and boulders and furrowing the underlying strata; a fossilized marine environment in the highest place on earth and the saga of plate tectonics in scientific discourse; and of course, the fact that there is not enough water on earth to drown the continents.
However, what you're asking is if there's a kernel of truth behind the flood legend, i.e. if a real geologic event could have had a huge impact on the psyche of early man. We do have a lot of geologic and archeological evidence that around 9000 years ago, the surface of the Black Sea was around 300m lower than its modern level, cut off from the global ocean by the Bosporus Strait. The lakes at the center were fresh, fed by rivers to the north. Human beings could have lived there. They could also have taken with them the story of when the gods tried to destroy the world - when the Meditteranean breached the passage and flooded the basin in a horrible cataclysm.
I got to sit in on a PhD defense that takes up the thread of this book. The span of time covered is pretty large, and the data comes together slowly but surely. I think the prologue alone is worth the price. So if you're into real-life explanations for how legends evolve and want to know how data is collected and interpreted by research institutions, this book is a fantastic place to start.
http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Scientific-Discoveries-Changed/dp/0684859203
I tell you what, i'll give you the booklist from a class i took called "Fall of Rome," and you can go to the library and check them out and read them and make your own evaluation.
The Roman Empire, a Study in Survival, by Chester G. Starr
The Later Roman Empire by Avril Cameron
The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, by Bryan Ward-Perkins
Byzantium, by Judith Herrin
Then there's a book on Charlemagne by Matthias Becher and another book by an Italian whose name i cannot remember right now. Also, look up Henri Pirenne and his thoughts on the rise and fall of Rome, both East and West.
"Sedentary" meaning settled in villages and cities, farming for food as opposed to "nomadic" which entails constantly following migrating herds. Protecting and exploiting the mines long term is more viable with a sedentary culture just because the mines don't move. Even if you start with nomads, they will settle down to exploit the mines.
Consider using the Byzantine Empire as a model. It is an excellent example of your idea of building and manipulating alliances from surrounding cultures. Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire covers in good detail how they used both diplomacy and the weapon systems available to them to survive for nearly a thousand years.
In the Name of Rome - Adrian Goldsworthy
This book gave a lot of interesting insight into the thought processes and decisions of many of Rome's greatest generals and I found it an enjoyable read.
Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris
Risk by Dan Gardner
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (in 6 volumes)
Be sure you have 2 or 3 years freed up before you start that last one ... :)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Carthage-265-146BC-Paperbacks/dp/0304366420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367682256&sr=8-1&keywords=Punic+Wars
here is a version that doesn't cost $100
Un livre intéréssant sur le sujet : https://www.amazon.fr/Fall-Rome-End-Civilization/dp/0192807285
Edit : Qui mentionne le plomb dans les calottes glacieres d'ailleurs. Je ne sais pas pourquoi ça fait re-surface comme actualité
Edit 2 : Le livre est dans la
/r/Askhistorians recommended booklistSeconding the recommendation you got about the Peloponnesian Wars, and for the Punic Wars I would say try Adrian Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars. I haven't read that specific one but I've read some of his other works and they came recommended for pop-reading by a friend of mine who studies classics.
> Peloponnesian Wars
This for something lighter and this for something a bit drier. I think these two books are the standard recommendations when approaching the topic.
>Also if anyone has the time perhaps point to someplace where I can read more without being overwhelmed?
Try Donald Kagan's single volume Peloponnesian War, in addition to Thucydides, already mentioned in another comment.
On top of that, you can get all of the classics for free online. You can either spend $133 for a set of classic history, or you can buy a $25 e-reader and have that (and so much more) for free.
FYI: in the /r/askhistorians booklist, the Byzantine recommendations are (of course) split between several different sections, so some are in Europe and some are in Middle East.
The word "Byzantium" or "Byzantine" isn't even necessarily mentioned in some of them, so for instance one of the standard introductory texts about the transition from "Rome" to "Byzantium," namely, Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity (which is excellent, read it!) might not appear at first glance.
Anyways, the point being that the book list is in general quite extensive, even if it's not always especially searchable : )
I really enjoyed this one here - though it's more about the Punic wars and mostly from Rome's perspective. It has some background on Carthage. My understanding is that there isn't a whole lot of information about Carthage outside of the Punic wars, though.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Carthage-265-146BC-Paperbacks/dp/0304366420
If you're still looking, I've got a copy of the book mentioned above. It's this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Egyptian-Book-Dead-Integrated/dp/0811864898
It's gorgeous, and it's fairly huge, kind of a coffee table book. You'll get full-color illustrations included along with translations and some bonus materials, but you won't get transliterations, just the pictures and the English text.
Another recommendation for Byzantine history: The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward Luttwak. Focused on Byzantine foreign policy, but with many fascinating digressions.
Knock yourself out. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
http://www.amazon.ca/Aristotle-Everybody-Mortimer-J-Adler/dp/0684838230
is a good book containing the essence of Aristotle. It's not too difficult for young people to understand.
I absorbed my ethics from parents, school and the surrounding society, initially unquestioningly. But as I matured I re-examined them in the light of experience and cold logic (which is common among Atheists), and I retain those that make sense.
In the Name of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy, is a pretty damn good look at Roman strategy and tactics over the course of the Republic/Empire.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roman-Army-War-100-Monographs/dp/0198150903
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096834459700400101?journalCode=wiha
These two mostly sum his viewpoint (and mine) on how ancient warfare worked.
My favorite books by him include How to Read a Book and Aristotle for Everybody.
I would highly recommend this author for anyone looking to study Thomas Aquinas - or for anyone who simply would like an introduction to philosophy.
Peloponnesian War - Sparta vs Athens in 5th century B.C., very fun read and has helped me understand the foreign policies of nations today.
https://www.amazon.com/Peloponnesian-War-Donald-Kagan/dp/0142004375
I have many books on SPQR. Pre-occupation Iron age and the cusp of occupation and revolt i enjoy.
..
A few of my favourites...
Cassivellaunus v. Cesar
Togodumnus
Cunobelin
Caratacus and brothers...
Prasutagus /Boudica
A favourite I do not see mentioned is The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200 (Oxford Classical Monographs) Adrian Goldsworthy.
https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Army-War-100-Monographs/dp/0198150903/ref=mp_s_a_1_31?ie=UTF8&qid=1541525660&sr=8-31&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=roman+army&dpPl=1&dpID=51Yjtp7MmtL&ref=plSrch
I believe you can get a reissue. I have the original hardcover, id be interested to know if there are any changes. Its an incredibly thorough, detailed and fantastic.
No, here it is - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volumes 1-3, Volumes 4-6 (Everyman's Library) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0307700763/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ThT3CbXT70B9S
It sounds like you have an Intro Geology book.
For a nice overview of historical geology, I was enraptured by "The Earth: An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey. It starts slow but delves into the major developments and ideas of geology as the author visits many significant locales around the world.
Stephen Jay Gould was a very prolific science-writer across paleontology and evolution.
John McPhee has several excellent books related to geology. I would recommend "Rising from the Plains" and "The Control of Nature."
Mark Welland's book "SAND" is excellent, covering topics of sedimentology and geomorphology.
If you are interested in how society manages geologic issues, I would recommend Geo-Logic, The Control of Nature mentioned before, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Cadillac Desert.
These are some of the texts I used in university:
This series is as "broad" an overview as I am familiar with - granted, I have a specialist interest in Chinese history, language, and culture, and have an undergraduate degree in history which makes me shy away from really broad histories as inaccurate, so YMMV. I did listen to a teaching company audio lecture series called "From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese History" which might be of interest to you; I found frustratingly general, but he was treating major facets of time/themes in 30 min lectures.
I haven't read the Three Kingdoms yet - been hoping to do that in the original. :) Sorry I can't be more helpful on that score.
Uh no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7rdCYCQ_U
Poslusaj video ukoliko imas vremena.
Svi izvori upotrebljeni u ovom videu:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307700763/?tag=freedradio-20
Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of An Empire by Simon Baker
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1846072840/?tag=freedradio-20
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer
http://www.amazon.com/dp/039305974X/?tag=freedradio-20
The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire by Anthony Everitt
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812978153/?tag=freedradio-20
A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0871404230/?tag=freedradio-20
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400078970/?tag=freedradio-20
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195325419/?tag=freedradio-20
The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman
http://www.amazon.com/dp/039332169X/?tag=freedradio-20
The Fate Of Empires by Sir John Glubb
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
Posted this about a week back: In the last six months it has to be "Ancient Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire" by Simon Baker. If you are going to read just one book on Rome, read this one. The man can write and had me hooked for days on end. Plus it ignited my current interest in the early European history, especially about the Franks and Eastern Empire after partition. Great stuff.
Adrian Goldsworthy wrote a book on the Punic Wars. He is an excellent writer and a great military historian. His book is quite comprehensive, however there is no other book that I would recommend to someone just starting out.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Punic-Wars-Adrian-Goldsworthy/dp/0304352845
Hope this helps!
Welcome. The book is well worth your time if you're interested:
http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Scientific-Discoveries-Changed/dp/0684859203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451663129&sr=8-1&keywords=Walter+Pitman
I think this will answer your question. There is some evidence to suggest that the area was occupied prior to the deluge that is now underwater.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/122800blacksea.html
Edit: Further reading Noah's Flood (book)
Check out Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations for sore really interesting history on this.
The same author has a second book - Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life which is possibly the most hopeful, uplifting, and practical book I’ve ever read on agriculture or the environment.
Highly recommend both!
I'll suggest two:
Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor (Karl Galinsky). This is recent, realistic but not jaundiced.
The Roman Revolution. This is a classic work, tough to read, now old, but a very interesting way of getting at the character and life of Augustus (by examining the course of events rather than dissecting his background and personality).
I'm not personally fond of Everitt's work. He seems to make unfounded conjectures (like his speculation at the beginning of his book on Augustus) and unjustifiable statements (like calling Cicero Rome's greatest politician...that one belongs to Augustus.)
The classic go-to book for the Christian period of Rome seems to be Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, covering the years 98-1590. I suggest an abridged version though, I didn't read much of it but it tends to draaaaaag at parts. Main thing is that Gibbon is criticized for having an overly anti-Christian slant to it.
http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Roman-Empire-Everymans-Library/dp/0307700763/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1426051623&sr=8-2&keywords=rise+and+fall+of+the+roman+empire
kindle version
http://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-DECLINE-EMPIRE-COMPLETE-VOLUMES-ebook/dp/B00BFFY6T0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426051623&sr=8-1&keywords=rise+and+fall+of+the+roman+empire
For a more general viewpoint, Susan Wise Baur gives an account of many ancient civilizations throughout the world in her book, The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. I did read all the way through this one and it's what I recommend for anyone needed a basic crash course of ancient world history.
http://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-World-Earliest-Accounts/dp/039305974X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426051683&sr=8-1&keywords=susan+bauer+history+of+the+world
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684838230?pc_redir=1407365328&robot_redir=1
That's "aristotle for everybody" by Mortimer J. Adler.
I am a philosophy and theology major, and I had a lecture class by a guy with three PhDs as my introduction. I don't really know where to point you other than the dialogues by Plato. In that class we went from the pre-Socratics all the way to Dawkins and Hitchens just basically talking about the main parts of each philosopher's philosophical thought. Also what might help is looking up philosophical terms first so you can understand what people mean when they say things. The word "soul" is a good example of this. The popular concept of soul as such is very far from what Plato would have thought or Aristotle or Aquinas or Augustine or Descartes or whomever you want.
Hello! Sorry if I killed your buzz about the book. :(
Sadly, Budge is horribly outdated. He was outdated back in his day already, to be quite honest. I'm talking about all aspects of his work, especially the linguistic/theological sides, which are arguably the most important when it comes to interpreting Egyptian sources. Much of his translations aren't careful or precise. He left much interpretation to his own biases, for instance, when translating the negative confessions, which is a part of the book where the deceased affirms that he did not commit certain acts which were unworthy of his going to the afterlife. For instance, something along the lines of (sorry, haven't for the reference books with me atm) translating "I have not coupled with a woman-boy" as "I am not a homosexual". The Egyptian views were almost always completely different from our own, and his translation reeks of his own english morality. It's just...fishy.
Budge was a head figure from the times when European archaeologists would go to Egypt and steal as much as they could. He damaged invaluable pieces in order to smuggle them.
Not just his character as a cheater, he was also such a prolific writer that much of his work went bad even as he wrote it. The quantity of books he wrote is unbelievable; the quality leaves to be desired, probably greatly due to the fact he was more interested in becoming famous and selling as much as he could. His methods were flawed from research on.
He does have a merit in popularising Egyptology, though. I don't hate him or anything, and you can read his book without worrying of remaining completely ignorant about Egypt (I mean, it's still something, even if outdated), but rest assured much of his info will have been corrected by now. Just know you're dealing with outdated material. That is especially so if you're in a more academic setting, which probably isn't your case, if you picked it up as a hobby thing.
If I may, as I'm hoping to correct myself from the buzz kill, I'd like to suggest this translation instead (sorry for lack of formatting, I'm on mobile): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0811864898/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1405885789&sr=8-1 :)
Raymond Faulkner's translations are well regarded, and he has done all three of those afterlife texts (the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin texts, and the Book of the Dead). Here is what I have.
Hi, Thank you for taking your time to answer. I'm looking for the Zhou-Qing Periods. I know that is "pretty much the entire history", but I am more interested in chronicles or annals that would give a good well rounded understanding on each dynasty. I have been eyeing The Cambridge History of China for awhile , but the book seems to be quite old in publishing, and the reviews online on websites seem mixed? Is it a valuable resource and not outtdated? They are quite expensive on Amazon!!
Have you ever used History of Imperial China (Harvard Press release)
Are the official annals like Ming Shi not translated into English? I'm Chinese, but my ability to read is frustrating haha.
My personal project is creating a website on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean history for context when one travel. One of my planned pages on the website is a brief history summary for each dynasty.