Caesar's Civil War, the story of the general's contest with the Pompeian party through nineteen months of civil war, is an unfinished masterpiece. The author abandoned it when he found himself living in a different world than that which saw its commencement. The narrative ends after Pompey's death, amidst the preliminaries to the Alexandrian war that initiated the next phase of the fight for primacy of Rome. The work shows the brilliance for which Caesar's oratory, like his generalship, was known: it was a political judgment, not a literary one, that relegated the Civil War...

Caesar's Civil War, the story of the general's contest with the Pompeian party through nineteen months of civil war, is an unfinished masterpiece. The author abandoned it when he found himself living in a different world than that which saw its commencement. The narrative ends after Pompey's death, amidst the preliminaries to the Alexandrian war that initiated the next phase of the fight for primacy of Rome. The work shows the brilliance for which Caesar's oratory, like his generalship, was known: it was a political judgment, not a literary one, that relegated the Civil War...

Tacitus' Annals is the central historical source for first-century C.E. Rome. It is prized by historians since it provides the best narrative material for the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, as well as a probing analysis of the imperial system of government. But the Annals should be seen as far more than an historical source, a mere mine for the reconstruction of the facts of Roman history. While the Annals is a superb work of history, it has also become a central text in the western literary, political, and even philosophical traditions - from the...

Xenophon's Anabasis, or The Expedition of Cyrus, is one of the most exciting historical narratives--as well as the most important autobiographical work--to have survived from ancient Greece. It tells the story of Cyrus, a young and charismatic Persian prince, who in 401 BC enlisted more than ten thousand Greek mercenaries in an attempt to seize the vast Persian empire for himself. Cyrus was killed in a great battle, most of the Greek commanders subsequently fell victim to treachery, and an Athenian aristocrat by the name of Xenophon found himself in the unexpected position...