I, Claudius

Fr Clint Power

Having watched Rome on tv and really enjoyed it I was inspired to pick up I,Claudius. About half way through at the moment and I'm really enjoying it. I have Claudius the God , The Twelve Caesars, Rubicon and Imperium lined up to be read in the near future, just wondering if people have recommendations for similar/good books about ancient Rome and Greece?

punka

I, Claudius is fantastic. Claudius the God isn't quite as good, but it's excellent nonetheless. (The BBC TV series is wonderful, you should check it out too).

Apart from what you've listed, Tacitus' Annals and Histories are great. As far as history/biography goes, the Historia Augusta is like Suetonius in content, but very historically inaccurate - there's a Penguin translation, Lives of the Later Caesars. It covers the Emperors from 117 to 284. I also like Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote in the 4th century AD. What survives of his work covers about thirty years of the history of the fourth century. He's not to everyone's tastes, however.

On the modern lit side, Gibbon's still your only man for the later Empire. Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution is an absolute classic book covering the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. Syme's analysis is very heavily influenced by what was going on in Germany when he was writing it (the book was published in 1939) and it's extremely well-written.

For Greek history, Herodotus and Thucydides are essential starting-points. They're both extremely enjoyable to read, and while obviously they both have their shortcomings, you'll get as good an impression of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars from reading them as you would from reading modern books. Plutarch's Lives are fantastic too (also for Roman biography) but not as much fun as Suetonius (less scandal).

For modern books on Greece, well there's Tom Holland's Persian Fire which just came out in the last year or two, which personally I'm not very fond of, but some people love it. The Fontana Ancient History series is a good place to start - it's not great if you just want a narrative of what happened, but the individual books are all very good on the issues facing historians of antiquity today, problems with sources, and also things like social history. They should have the books in Hodges Figgis - they're standard on introductory ancient history courses in college. They cover both Greek and Roman history, personally I think the Greek volumes in the series are a bit better on the whole, but they're all excellent and a good introduction to ancient history.

I could go on forever - are there any particular aspects of antiquity you're interested in?

Fr Clint Power

Thanks for that Punka! I like the sound of that Ronald Syme book, I must check it out. I picked up Tom Holland's Persian Fire the other day when Isaw it for a bargain 6 euro (in Vibes and Scribes in Cork) and Gibbon's Decline and Fall (this should keep me going for a while!).

Herodotus and Thucydides also sound ineteresting which of the two would you recommend as the best starting point?

I came across a couple of more books while researching the ones you listed, just wondering if you have read or can recommend any of these?

• The Civil War - Julius Caesar
• The Conquest of Gaul - Julius Caesar
• Amida - Mark Walker
• The Later Roman Empire: AD 354-378 - Ammianus Marcellinus
• Lays of Ancient Rome - Thomas Babbington Macaulay
• The Secret History - Procopius

Do you know of any other good historical novels in a similar vein to I,Claudius set in these times?

Mick86

Fr Clint Power wrote:

Do you know of any other good historical novels in a similar vein to I,Claudius set in these times?

Colleen McCullough wrote a series but I've only read the first one, The First Man in Rome which was quite good.

http://www.iblist.com/series2416.htm

punka

I'd read Herodotus before Thucydides. It makes sense for a number of reasons - primarily, because Herodotus came first, and to a certain extent Thucydides is reacting against Herodotus' style of writing history - while Herodotus' narrative consists more of anecdotes and hearsay, and covers hundreds of years of history, Thucydides' is firmly placed in the here and now and is focused on the facts. They're both excellent, personally I prefer Herodotus (he's more fun, more entertaining anecdotes, etc.) but Thucydides is generally referred to as the "historian's historian".

Julius Caesar's commentaries on the civil and Gallic wars are really great. They're written in the third person to give them something of a pretense of objectivity. After you've read his Civil Wars, you might consider reading Lucan's epic poem "de bello civili", or "Pharsalia" as it's sometimes called. It deals with the same subject but in a very different way.

Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius are both also very entertaining. Procopius in particular is full of scathing anecdotes and attacks on the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora.

I've never read Macaulay's Lays or Amida, so I can't help you there.

Other good historical novels, well, Robert Harris' Pompeii is absolutely fantastic, dealing with the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It's impeccably researched and a really great read. I think he has a new book out too set in ancient Rome, but it hasn't come out in Canada yet so I don't know anything about it, I'm afraid. Steven Saylor has a series of detective novels set in ancient Rome, again, I haven't read them, but I'm told they're very entertaining. There used to be a website somewhere that had a list of classics-related novels, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.