Ancient Literature

My Legion denarius thread touched on a book written about them, so I was wondering if anyone else besides me was reading any ancient-related stuff at the moment, and/or what you all like to read with regards to ancient (or medieval) history. I myself had been reading "The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians", which explains in detail on how Rome's relationship with the Germanic world ultimately brought it down, but I've finished it so I'm looking right now for any other literature I could buy/rent that talks about the 4-6th centuries AD and the fall of Rome.

 

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In addition to history books, I read a lot of historical fiction. I am currently reading a book entitled Roma by Stephen Saylor about the founding of Rome where the story is built around the myths of Roman history. Myths like Romulus and Remus and the she wolf, and Hercules and Cacus. Very interesting. Some myths I was unaware of until I started reading this book.

For those of you into medieval history, another historical fiction I can highly recommend is Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell. Historically accurate and highly entertaining. A real page turner.

 

I read it a while ago, but really liked Caesar's Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins, but nothing 'ancient' related in my que unless you count H.P. Lovecraft

 

Not recently, but I have read these:
Up the Line by Robert Silverberg. Set in Constantinople between the time of Justinian and the Fall, most of the action takes place in the middle years. The hapless hero is a Guide for time travel tourism. He loses track of and control of his charges and the timeline is damaged. It get worse for him from there. But the writing is lively and accurate. As I recall, they assign him to fill in for another guide and take some tourists to England of the Black Plague.

(Silverberg has been extremely prolific from childhood, publishing a million words a year as a teenager.) He wrote two non-fiction books, Sunken History: The Story of Underwater Archaeology (1963), and Great Adventures in Archaeology (1964). Some of his space yarns involve archaeology. I recall one in which the natives produced beautiful fakes to please the explorers.)

Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis. (Googled for cites: "Set in Rome and Britannia during AD 70, just after the year of the four emperors," and "The intriguing premise of a detective story set in Imperial Rome in 70 A.D. is unpredictably fulfilled by Davis's hero-gumshoe, M. Didius Falco.") I actually did not like this as much. It seemed like Sam Spade: Lost in Rome. The author did not capture the "feel" of Rome to me. Maybe someone else liked it more. Literature is like that.

I liked Roman Blood by Stephen Saylor. (Reviewed with other Roman Murder Mysteries here: "Saylor takes an extant defense speech by Cicero and a real murder case and builds a murder mystery from it, offering his own (fictional) solution to the case and using Gordianus to explore the various characters involved, especially Cicero himself and his secretary Tiro. Saylor also examines Sulla and his dictatorship but, reading this long before I ever studied any ancient history, it was the murder mystery and the characters, especially Tiro and Bethesda..." [more]

The Dancer from Atlantis by Poul Anderson is set in the Minoan world at the time of the Mycenaean conquest. An American engineer is swept up by a crashing time machine that snatches a Viking and one other guy and drops the three of them near Knossos before the pilot dies. "Shall I compare you to Aphrodite?" the American says to woo the priestess. "Aphrodite! That barrel-buttocked cow-teated bitch who is always in heat?!"

A Choice of Destinies by Melissa Scott is about a mystical priestess who shows up at the key moments in the life of Alexander the Great to give him good advice. He does not go to India. He does not get sick and die. He does conquer Carthage and Rome and unite the known world.

MARY RENAULT - the queen of ancient Greek fiction. The Bull from the Sea, The King Must Die, The Persian Boy.

See this website for more than you will know what to do with.
Historical Novels
http://www.historicalnovels.info/Ancient.html

 

Kaparthy, may I remind you that the forum has rules against "language".

Just looking out for you.

 

i read a few of the steven saylor books before i was into ancients even, maybe i should go back a read some more...i like old gordianus the finder. i read several cornwell books also. saw several other i like up there also (lovecraft, silverberg). i like to read history and science books, but i got to get in a fiction every other book or so....at least.

VK, considering your area 0f collecting, you may want to consider jack whyte's camulod chronicles , 5th century britain and a historical fiction spin on the authurian legend. i think those books spured my to buy my first roman coin a couple years ago.

thanks for that list kaparthy.

 

VK,

An excellent book is "Gothic War: Justinian's Campaign to Reclaim Italy" about Belisaurius's life and campaigns. After reading this you will think Belisaurius was the greatest general of late antiquity. Which he was.

Lots of Dark Age antics are included - the Gothic nation, Franks, Lombards actions in Italy and the destruction of the Vandal nation by Belisaurius at the head of the Byzantines and prior to their invasion of Italy. Great sieges of Rome. The rise of Totilla. The functioning of Justinian's Court. Legendary stuff for all those interested in Late Antiquity.

I also liked "Constantinople: The Last Great Siege" by Roger Crowley.

A quetsion: does anyone know where is best to read the latest academic numismatic research on Ancient coins and/or archaeology?

 

An answer: on my couch, snuggled in our sunroom on nice wintery day.

 

Horsa: pay steve no never mind. The rest of us don't!

 

Not truly historical fiction, but fiction set in well-researched historic times... Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, both by Ken Follett.

I think he's immensely talented and his epics are very satisfying in depth. Plus he writes strong female characters

Might be fun to read them again and think about the coins that would have been used by these characters. Another themed set possibility?

 

Actually, you are probably best served by the online community. http://www.ancients.info/ is a service of the Vcoins.com sellers. The homepage there links to many other free collector sites. If a story comes up in the mainstream media, someone posts it there, or, really, here, also. I mean, CoinTalk is one the most active general forums for numismatics.

You might be able to program your own news search engine to alert you.

As for "the latest" I find it challenging to keep up with the past. I mean, just reading back issues is illuminating.

I have my own couch, also, but it depends on where you live. I have been fortunate to have been in East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Columbus, and now Austin, where huge university libraries carry the academic periodicals for numismatics. If you join the American Numismatic Society in New York City ($95 per year), you get the American Journal of Numismatics. The British Numismatic Society is £32.00 per year and gets you the British Journal of Numismatics.

Unfortunately, The Celator folded last year. For over 20 years, it was the leading magazine for collectors of ancients.

The ANA's Numismatist does carry news about ancient coins, but mostly common stories from the mainstream media and their publishing cycle is 90 days, so you can have found it first on CNN or MSNBC. That said, The Numismatist does have regular columns for both Ancient and Medieval numismatics, as well as frequent feature articles. Basic Adult Membership is $28 (electronic magazine) or regular for $41 (print magazine). As an ANA member you can search the magazine archives online going back to January 2009.

 

Both very good reads.

 

Wow! I'm sorry to hear about that. I had mentioned to Kerry last year about possibly going digital, but he didn't have plans for that direction.


For an original text and late Roman Empire (AD 353-378), I recommend highly the very readable and reliable Ammianus Marcellinus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianus_Marcellinus

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ammian/home.html

If not already mentioned, I really liked Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower.


guy

 

I like late Roman copper. You and see I do on my site:
http://esty.ancients.info/ricix/
For the primary ancient source for Valentinian and Valens, see Ammianus Marcellinus: The Later Roman Empire (AD. 354-378) translated by Walter Hamilton, Penguin Books, 1986 (which is very inexpensive). Books 26-31 cover Valentinian I through the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople. This is 130 pages of an original ancient source. Highly recommended.

Right now I am reading "Justinian's Flea" by William Rosen. (Justinian was Byzantine emperor, 527-565.) It is subtitled "Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe." I am enjoying it.

For bedtime reading a few minutes at a time I read "A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World's Greatest Empire," by J. C. McKeown. It is great fun with fascinating paragraphs, many attributed to various ancient authors.

 

A couple months ago I completed two books by Anthony Everitt. The titles of which are 'Augustus - The Life of Rome's First Emperor' and 'Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome'. Both very interesting books and both have a couple references to coins in them which I really enjoyed.

Also based on Bing's recommendation I am a couple of chapters in to 'Legions of Rome' by Stephen Dando-Collins. Right now it is very interesting but he jumps around a little bit in his section and I feel doesn't expand enough but I am in the beginning chapters so he may go more in depth a little further into the book. I will let you know when I get there!

 

Many thanks for the suggestions guys!

Really love reading about this era so I'll definitely make an effort to seek these out!

 

Did you manage to find a free online version, or did you buy?

 

For the fall of the western empire, I don't have a lot of suggestions except the first volume of Norwich's Byzantium. It shows it from Constantinople's perspective. Also do not forget coin books of the era, like the Visigoth book. A good coin book also covers the history.

 

Can't help but think of the common belief that the Eastern empire hardly did anything to get the West back onto its feet during these trying times; it was quite the opposite. When it was able to, the East would send financial and military aid (most notably for the two failed expeditions against the Vandals). Only after the last failed attempt to conquer the Vandal kingdom for the West did everyone in both halves pretty much realized that there wasn't really any hope left for the fading Western Empire.

 

Actually, Norwich's volume on Venice is interesting in this area as well. As you know, Venice was founded during this time of invasions, with the people moving to swamps where foreign cavalry would not follow. I believe you would like the first chapter of that book very much VK.