Ancient Europe

The period between the end of the eighth century CE and the middle of the 11th is often called the “Viking Age” because this is the period in which Scandinavian people expanded their contacts with the outside world through trade, raiding, exploration, and colonization. This volume presents a version of Ragnar’s saga compiled from different modern sources, along with information providing additional historical and documentary context, followed by a discussion of some aspects of modern appropriations and representations of ancient Norse culture.

Founded by Alexander the Great and built by self-styled Greek pharaohs, the city of Alexandria at its height dwarfed both Athens and Rome. It was the marvel of its age, legendary for its vast palaces, safe harbors, and magnificent lighthouse. But it was most famous for the astonishing intellectual efflorescence it fostered and the library it produced. If the European Renaissance was the "rebirth" of Western culture, then Alexandria, Egypt, was its birthplace.

The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....

Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval.

Tacitus, who condemns the depravity of these rulers, which he saw as proof of the corrupting force of absolute power, writes caustically of the brutal and lecherous Tiberius, the weak and cuckolded Claudius, and "the artist" Nero. In particular, his account of the bloody reigns of Tiberius and Nero brims with plots, murder, poisoning, suicide, uprisings, death, and destruction. The Annals also provides a vivid account of the violent suppression of the revolt led by Boudicca in Britain, the great fire of Rome under Nero, and the subsequent bloody persecution of the Christians.

Pompeii was destroyed by the horrific eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, which buried at least 2,000 unlucky people. Pompeii became a mysterious tomb, hiding secrets of Rome and other civilizations that influenced the life and culture of the city and its people. Who were the Pompeiians, and how did they live before that dreadful day? What did the last days of Pompeii look like, and did the Pompeiians know that the fate of their city would be sealed that day, not to be uncovered for centuries to come?

We speak English today because the Anglo-Saxons took over most of post-Roman Britain. How did that happen? There is little evidence: not much archaeology, and even less written history. There is, however, a huge amount of speculation. King Arthur's Wars brings an entirely new approach to the subject - the answers are out there, in the British countryside, waiting to be found. Months of field work and map study allow us to understand, for the first time, how the Anglo-Saxons conquered England, county by county and decade by decade.

The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. However, we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence. This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years.

The Spartans of ancient Greece were a powerful and unique people, radically different from any civilization before or since. A society of warrior-heroes, they were living exemplars of self-sacrifice, community endeavor, and achievement against all odds, qualities that today signify the ultimate in heroism. Scholars even believe that Thomas More had Sparta specifically in mind when he coined the term "Utopia".

The Song of Roland is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece of French vernacular literature and one of the world’s greatest epic poems. Written down around the year 1090, The Song of Roland finely crafted verses tell of the betrayal and defeat of Charlemagne’s beloved nephew at the Pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees and of the revenge subsequently sought on his behalf.

Get to know the Greek gods and goddesses, from the mighty Zeus, to the temperamental Poseidon, the beautiful Aphrodite, and every character from A to Z. Who wouldn’t want to hear about Zeus and his command of lightning, Hades and how he found his bride, the wisdom of Athena, and so many other stories that capture the imagination. These stories can do more than just entertain; they can also inspire and teach us lessons that were penned by the Greeks themselves.

The Celts are one of the most well-known groups in Europe and one of the least understood. Depending on which classifications are used, the Celts are also one of the oldest civilizations in Europe. In the centuries before Christ, the Celts were spread out across much of continental Europe, and though they are mostly identified with Gaul, evidence suggests they also spread as far as Portugal.

For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off – through luck, guile and sheer mulishness – any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered everywhere – indeed the history of Europe hardly makes sense without them.

In The Rule of Empires, Timothy Parsons gives a sweeping account of the evolution of empire from its origins in ancient Rome to its most recent twentieth-century embodiment. He explains what constitutes an empire and offers suggestions about what empires of the past can tell us about our own historical moment. Parsons uses imperial examples that stretch from ancient Rome, to Britain's "new" imperialism in Kenya, to the Third Reich to parse the features common to all empires, their evolutions and self-justifying myths, and the reasons for their inevitable decline.

The very idea of empire was created in ancient Rome, and even today, traces of its monuments, literature, and institutions can be found across Europe, the Near East, and North Africa - and sometimes even further afield. Historian Greg Woolf expertly recounts how this mammoth empire was created, how it was sustained in crisis, and how it shaped the world of its rulers and subjects - a story spanning a millennium and a half of history.

How did we get here, to this time and place in history? Are we repeating history's mistakes because we did not learn about the pivotal events that shaped the modern world? This three-book history course helps you quickly understand the nuances and the impact of three crucial periods portrayed in countless films: the Crusades and of the rise and fall of two great empires, the Roman and British.

The story of the Roman Republic is the greatest epic in human history. Seen in the long perspective of time, it seems too fantastic to be real. From its modest beginnings as a convenient fording place on the Tiber to its eventual destiny as the mistress of the Mediterranean, Rome offers a strange tale of fate, sacrifice, and indomitable willpower. The stern realities of war shaped its policies from the very beginning.

The Civil War is Julius Caesar’s personal account of his war with Pompey the Great - the war that destroyed the five-hundred-year-old Roman Republic. Caesar the victor became Caesar the dictator. In three short books, Caesar describes how, in order to defend his honor and the freedom of both himself and the Roman people, he marched on Rome and defeated the forces of Pompey and the Senate in Italy, Spain, and Greece.

Find out how the people of this country fought against nature to cultivate land below sea level. Discover how they survived wars, invasions, and natural disasters and developed a trading nation that would become the envy of Europe. Uncover the truth behind bloody battles fought between medieval royalty, warlords, and rebellious guilds of Dutch workers, all of which shaped the country we know today.

Unquestionably, Herodotus has left mankind one of the world's greatest works of literature. The Persian Wars is part history, part geography, part anthropology...and completely entertaining. It possesses a charm that is legendary. But, over and above this, Herodotus has succeeded for all time in brilliantly expressing the conflict between the ideal of the free man defending his liberty within a state based on the rule of law, and that of the despot who bases his rule on brute force and whose subjects are considered slaves.