Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time?
How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected? Pliny the Elder

ROMAN HISTORY READING GROUP

READING LISTS

The Empire & Early Byzantium (F) = Fiction

In Loosely Chronological Order
With Related Background Readings & Newly Found Books of the Era Pursued

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Gibbon Tacitus Seneca Dio Cassius The Two Plinys The Provinces Religions Poetry & Literature General Travel Warfare	From the Republic to the Principate The Julio-Claudians David Wishart Rosemary Rowe The Flavians Lindsey Davis The Antonines From Septimius Severus to Constantine The Later Empire	Early Rome & The Republic Book List by Author Name German Language Books	Home Site Index Roman History Books and More Blog Currently Reading Past Readings, Empire & Early Byzantium updated May 2008

Edward Gibbon			In the UK:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Unabridged Abridged	Memoirs of My Life	The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon : Printed verbatim from hitherto unpublished MSS., with an introduction by the Earl of Sheffield	Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Vol 1 (Penguin Classics) Gibbon's Vol. 1 & 2 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Vol 2 (Penguin Classics) Gibbon's Vol. 3 & 4 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Vol 3 (Penguin Classics) Gibbon's Vol. 5 & 6 Online: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon			Philip Matyszak
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : Volume 1 Gibbon's Vol. 1 & 2 (Penguin Classics)	The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : Volume 2 Gibbon's Vol. 3 & 4 (Penguin Classics)	The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : Volume 3 Gibbon's Volume 4 & 5 (Penguin Classics)	The Enemies of Rome: From Hannibal to Attila the Hun
Warwick Ball	Barbara Levick	Fergus Millar	Theodor Mommsen
Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire	The Government of the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook	Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Volume 2: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome)	A History of Rome Under the Emperors lecture transcriptions
Adrian Murdoch	Peter Heather	Bryan Ward-Perkins	Stefan Rebenich
The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West UK only at this time	The Fall of the Roman Empire : A New History of Rome and the Barbarians	The Fall of Rome And the End of Civilization	Theodor Mommsen, Eine Biographie

DIO, TACITUS, SENECA
Dio Cassius	Tacitus
Roman History, Books & Fragments 9 Volumes, Loeb's Classical Library Online: Dio (Cassius Dio) - Roman History (Lacus Curtius)	The Annals	The Histories	The Agricola and The Germania (Penguin Classics)
	Online		Ronald Syme
	The Annals / The Annals (MIT) Agricola Germania Johan Ortiz Website: Roman History (14 - 70 A.D.) by Publius Cornelius Tacitus		Tacitus: 2 Volumes (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints)
Seneca
Dialogue & Letters	Letters from a Stoic

FROM THE REPUBLIC TO THE PRINCIPATE
Appianus	Ronald Syme	Suetonius
The Civil Wars	The Roman Revolution	The Twelve Caesars	Online: Suetonius: Life of the Caesars
Fergus Millar	Josiah Osgood	Philip Matyszak
The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution	Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire	Chronicle of the Roman Republic: The Rulers of Ancient Rome from Romulus to Augustus	The Sons of Caesar: Imperial Rome's First Dynasty
Alfred Duggan	Colleen McCullough Masters of Rome
Three's Company (F)	The October Horse	Antony and Cleopatra, A Novel

THE JULIO-CLAUDIANS: AUGUSTUS
Augustus The Deeds of the Divine Augustus (Res Gestae)		An Augustus Primer on this site
G. P. Baker	Pat Southern	Anthony Everitt	Dio Cassius
Augustus	Augustus	Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor Trade Paperback October 2007	The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus
Allan Massie		Anthony A. Barrett	Karl Galinsky
Augustus (F)	Anthony (F)	Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome	Augustan Culture
Tony Clunn	Peter S. Wells	Adrian Murdoch	Ronald Syme
The Quest for the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield	The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest	Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest	The Augustan Aristocracy
John Williams	Pat Southern smaller companion books to Augustus:		Diane E.E. Kleiner
Augustus (F)	Mark Antony	Cleopatra	Cleopatra and Rome
Karen Essex		Gillian Bradshaw
Kleopatra (F)	Pharaoh (F)	Cleopatra's Heir alternative history	Render Unto Caesar (F)
Hermann Broch	David Wishart
The Death of Virgil (F)	I, Virgil (F)

THE LATER JULIO-CLAUDIANS
G. P. Baker	Barbara Levick	Robin Seager	Anthony Burgess
Tiberius Caesar	Tiberius the Politician a good source for Augustus	Tiberius	Kingdom of the Wicked (F)
Anthony A. Barrett	Barbara Levick	Allan Massie
Caligula: The Corruption of Power	Claudius	Tiberius (F)	Caligula (F)
Caligula: The Corruption of Power	Robert Graves
Jean Baptiste Racine	Robert Graves
Three Plays Phaedra/Britannicus/Andromache	I, Claudius (F)	Claudius the God (F)	Ich Claudius Kaiser und Gott (F) The German edition of Graves is a revised and streamlined version of the English orginal in one volume, translation supervised by Graves.
Edward Champlin	Miriam T. Griffin	Anthony A. Barrett	Henryk Sienkiewicz
Nero	Nero: The End of a Dynasty	Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire	Quo Vadis (F)
James Duffy, Gladiators of the Empire series		Patrick Larkin	Jesse Browner
Sand of the Arena (F)	The Fight for Rome (F)	The Tribune: A Novel of Ancient Rome (F)	The Uncertain Hour: A Novel (F)

Simon Scarrow: The Eagle Series
Under the Eagle	The Eagle's Conquest	When the Eagle Hunts	The Eagle and the Wolves
The Eagle's Prey	The Eagle's Prophecy

David Wishart: Marcus Valerius Corvinus Mysteries
Ovid	Germanicus	Sejanus	Old Bones
The Lydian Baker	Last Rites	White Murder	A Vote for Murder
Parthian Shot	Food for the Fishes	In at the Death	Illegally Dead

THE FLAVIANS
Kenneth Wellesley	Barbara Levick	Pat Southern	Allan Massie
The Year of the Four Emperors	Vespasian	Domitian: Tragic Tyrant	Nero's Heirs (F)
Graham Webster	Lindsey Davis	David Corson	Donna Gillespie
The Roman Imperial Army: Of the First and Second Centuries A.D.	The Course of Honor (F)	Domitia and Domitian (F)	The Lightbearer (F)

Lindsay Davis: Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries
The Silver Pigs	Shadows in Bronze	Venus in Copper	The Iron Hand of Mars
Poseidon's Gold	Last Act in Palmyra	Time to Depart	A Dying Light in Corduba
Three Hands in the Fountain	One Virgin Too Many	Two for the Lions	Ode to a Banker
A Body in the Bathhouse	The Jupiter Myth	See Delphi and Die	Saturnalia

THE TWO PLINYS
Pliny the Elder	Pliny the Younger	Albert A.Bell Jr.
Natural History: A Selection	Letters Online: Letters	From the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger (Mysteries)
Natural History: A Selection	Letters Online: Letters	All Roads Lead to Murder (F)	The Blood of Caesar
Albert A.Bell Jr.	Robert Harris
Daughter of Lazarus (F)	Pompeii: A Novel (F)

THE ANTONINES
Julian Bennett	David Corson	Anthony Birley	Marguerite Yourcenar
Trajan: Optimus Princeps	Trajan and Plotina (F)	Hadrian: The Restless Emperor	Memoirs of Hadrian
Anthony Birley	Marcus Aurelius	Anthony Birley	Pat Southern
Marcus Aurelius	The Meditations Online: The Meditations	Septimius Severus	The Roman Cavalry: From the First to the Third Century AD with Karen Dixon
William L. MacDonald		Michael Grant	Michael Anderson
Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy	Pantheon : Design, Meaning and Progeny	The Antonines: The Roman Empire in Transition	The Parthian Interpreter: An Odyssey of the Later Empire (F)

FROM SEVERUS TO CONSTANTINE
Pat Southern	Stephen Williams	Richard Stoneman	Judith Weingarten / blog
The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine	Diocletian and the Roman Recovery	Palmyra and Its Empire: Zenobia's Revolt against Rome	The Chronicle of Zenobia: The Rebel Queen (F)
Michael Grant		Sourcebook	Jacob Burckhardt
The Severans: The Changed Roman Empire	Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times	The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine	The Age of Constantine the Great
A. H. M. Jones	Charles Odahl	G.P. Baker
Constantine and the Conversion of Europe	Constantine and the Christian Empire (Roman Imperial Biographies)	Constantine the Great And the Christian Revolution
Ben Pastor (Aelius Spartianus Mysteries)
The Water Thief	The Fire Walker

THE LATER EMPIRE
G.W. Bowersock	Gore Vidal	Adrian Murdoch
Julian the Apostate	Julian (F)	The Last Pagan : Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World	The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West
Amminanus Marcellinus	Stephen Williams & Gerald Friell	Fergus Millar	Michael Kulikowski
The Later Roman Empire	Theodosius, The Empire at Bay	A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408-450) (Sather Classical Lectures)	Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity)
Peter Heather	Alessandro Barbero	Thomas Burns
Goths in the Fourth Century (Translated Texts for Historians)	The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle That Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire	A History of the Ostrogoths
Robert Browning	David Rohrbacher	William Rosen
The Byzantine Empire	The Historians of Late Antiquity	Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
John Haldon	Albert Noyer
Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World	The Saint's Day Deaths (F)	The Secundus Papyrus (F)	The Cybelene Conspiracy (F)
Procopius	G.P. Baker	Lord Mahon	Robert Graves
Secret History Online: Secret History	Justinian: The Last Roman Emperor	The Life of Belisarius	Count Belisarius (F)
Paolo Belzoni	Gillian Bradshaw		H.N. Turteltaub
Belisarius: The First Shall Be Last (F)	Imperial Purple (F)	Bearkeeper's Daughter (F)	Justinian a later Justinian! (F)

THE PROVINCES
Ernle Bradford	Michael Grant	Pat Southern	Peter Salway
Cleopatra	Cleopatra	Cleopatra	A History of Roman Britain
G.W. Bowersock		Fergus Millar	Peter S. Wells
Roman Arabia	Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam	The Roman Near East: 31 BC-AD 337	The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe
Herwig Wolfram	Karen Essex		Margaret George
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples	Kleopatra (F)	Pharaoh (F)	The Memoirs of Cleopatra (F)
Ruth Downie		Pauline Gedge	Wallace Breem
Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire (F) Paperback in March 2008	Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (F)	The Eagle and the Raven (F)	The Eagle in the Snow (F)
Gillian Bradshaw
Cleopatra's Heir alternative history	Island of Ghosts (F) �	The Beacon at Alexandria (F)

Rosemary Rowe: Libertus Mysteries of Roman Britain
Germanicus Mosaic	A Pattern of Blood	Murder in the Forum	The Chariots of Calyx
The Legatus Mystery	The Ghosts Of Glevum	Enemies of the Empire	A Roman Ransom
A Coin for the Ferryman

RELIGION: PAGANISM
Ramsay MacMullen	Lily Ross Taylor	Alan Watson
Paganism in the Roman Empire	The Divinity of the Roman Emperor	The State, Law & Religion: Pagan Rome

RELIGION: EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Eusebius		Albert A. Bell Jr.
The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine	The Church History, A New Translation With Commentary by Paul L. Maier	Exploring The New Testament World: An Illustrated Guide To The World Of Jesus And The First Christians
Jose Saramago	Fiction by Sholem Asch	James Cannon	Albert A. Bell Jr.
The Gospel According to Christ (F) not for the faint hearted!	The Nazarene The Apostle check Amazon Mary	Apostle Paul: A Novel of the Man Who Brought Christianity to Western World (F)	Daughter of Lazarus (F)
Henryk Sienkiewicz	Paul Maier	Joyce Salisbury	Mario de Carvalho
Quo Vadis (F)	The Flames of Rome (F)	Perpetua's Passion (F)	A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening (F)

RELIGION: JEWS IN THE ROMAN WORLD
Flavius Josephus			John M. G. Barclay
The Complete Works of Josephus	The War of the Jews	The New Complete Works of Josephus	Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE - 117 CE)
Online: The War of the Jews Antiquities of the Jews

POETRY & LITERATURE
William Harris	Lucretius	The Cambridge Companion	Edith Hamilton
Ancient Literacy	On the Nature of the Universe	The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire	The Roman Way
Thomas Habinek	Juvenal	Susanna Morton Bround	on Ovid
The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome	The Satires (Oxford World's Classics)	The Roman Satirists and Their Masks	The Cambridge Companion to Ovid

POETRY & LITERATURE: OVID
Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Johns Hopkins University Press 2002 a modernised version of Arthur Golding's 1567 translation	Metamorphoses: A New Translation by Charles Martin W. W. Norton & Company	Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics) David Raeburn, Translator	The Metamorphoses (Signet Classics) Horace Gregory, Translator
The Art of Love (Modern Library Classics) James Michie, Translator	The Erotic Poems (Penguin Classics) Peter Green, Translator The Amores, The Art of Love, Cures of Love, On Facial Treatment for Ladies	Fasti (Penguin Classics)	The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letter

GENERAL
Dictionary	Atlas	Lesley & Roy Adkins	Florence Dupont
The Oxford Classical Dictionary	The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome (Penguin Historical Atlases)	Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome	Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jo-Ann Shelton	J.P.V.D. Balsdon	Alan Watson	Sarah B. Pomery
As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History	Romans & Aliens an excellent source book	The State, Law & Religion: Pagan Rome	Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves : Women in Classical Antiquity
Jérôme Carcopino	T. P. Wiseman	Phyllis Pray Bober	Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa
Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire 2nd edition, edited & annotated, 2003	Roman Drama and Roman History (Exeter Studies in History) Historiography and Imagination (in the UK only)	Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy	A Taste of Ancient Rome
Guido Majno	Donald G. Kyle	Thomas Wiedemann	Mary Beard
Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World	Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Approaching the Ancient World)	Emperors and Gladiators	The Roman Triumph
Carlin Barton		William Harris	The Cambridge Companion
The Sorrows of The Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster	Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones	Ancient Literacy	The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire
J. M. C. Toynbee	John Gager	O.F. Robinson	John G. Landels
Death and Burial in the Roman World	Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World	Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration	Engineering in the Ancient World

Architecture & Engineering
John G. Landels	Roger Ulrich
Engineering in the Ancient World	Roman Woodworking
Alexander Gordon McKay	David Sider	Christopher C. Parslow
Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World	The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum	Rediscovering Antiquity : Karl Weber and the Excavation of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae

Travel
Lionel Casson	Tony Perrotett Route 66 A.D.		Philip Matyszak
Travel in the Ancient World	Route 66 A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists	Paperback version: Pagan Holiday	Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day
Pausanias		K. W. Arafat	Christian Habicht
Guide to Greece: Volume 1: Central Greece	Guide to Greece: Volume 2: Southern Greece	Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers	Pausanias' Guide to Ancient Greece (Sather Classical Lectures, 50)

Warfare
N.J.E. Austin & N.B. Rankov	Hans Delbrück	Adrian Goldsworthy
Exploratio: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople	Warfare in Antiquity History of the Art of War	The Complete Roman Army	In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire
J.E. Lendon	Tony Clunn	Adrian Murdoch	Peter S. Wells
Soldiers and Ghosts: Heroic Mythology and Soldiering in Antiquity	The Quest for the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield Irene's review	Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg blog: Bread and circuses Irene's review	The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest
Pat Southern
The Roman Cavalry: From the First to the Third Century AD with Karen Dixon

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Gibbon Tacitus Seneca Dio Cassius The Two Plinys The Provinces Religions Poetry & Literature General Travel Warfare	From the Republic to the Principate The Julio-Claudians David Wishart Rosemary Rowe The Flavians Lindsey Davis The Antonines From Septimius Severus to Constantine The Later Empire