LYING across the chief meeting-place of Europe and Asia, Armenia suffered immeasurably more from the conflict of two civilizations than it profited by their exchange of goods and ideas. If the West penetrated the East under pressure from Rome, Byzantium, or crusading Europe, if the East moved westwards, under Persian, Arab, Mongol, or Turk, the roads used were too often the roads of Armenia.This was not all. East and West claimed and fought for control or possession of the country....

THE history of the Byzantine Empire under the rule of the Isaurian dynasty is one of the periods in the prolonged evolution of the monarchy least easy of comprehension. The work of the sovereigns usually called the Iconoclast Emperors has been, in fact, recorded for us practically only by opponents or victims, and their impassioned reports have obviously no claim to be considered strictly impartial. On the other hand, the writings defending and justifying the policy of the Emperors have ne...

AT the accession of Clovis, who succeeded his father Childeric about the year 481, the Salian Franks had advanced as far as the Somme. Between the Somme and the Loire the suzerainty of the Roman Empire was still maintained. The various Gallo-Roman cities preserved a certain independence, while a Roman official, by name Syagrius, exercised a kind of protection over them. Syagrius was the son of Aegidius, the former magister militum, and he held the command by hereditary right. After the fal...

The Roman historian Velleius Paterculus lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, serving as a military tribune and later as a cavalry officer and legatus in Germany and Pannonia. Written in a highly rhetorical style, his ‘Compendium of Roman History’ is a summary of Roman history from the mythical fall of Troy to AD 29. As Paterculus approaches his own times, he becomes much fuller in his treatment of history, especially dealing with the years between the death of Julius Caesar in...

Mommsen's history of the Roman Republic in five volumes. These volumes cover from the founding of Rome up to the disintegration of the First Triumvirate (Caesar, Pompey, Crassus). The author cites dates in the Roman style, AUC, from the founding of the city in 753 BC. A table at the end shows modern-day equivalents. According to Wikipedia, Mommsen is "generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the 19th century." This work complements Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".

Viscount James Bryce (1838-1922) was a British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician who was well known and respected on both sides of the Atlantic. Bryce's intellectual distinction and political industry made him a valuable member of the Liberal Party. As soon as the late 1860s, he acted as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education. By 1885 he was made Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under William Ewart Gladstone, but he had to leave office after th...

In the first authoritative biography of Alexander the Great written for a general audience in a generation, classicist and historian Philip Freeman tells the remarkable life of the great conqueror.The celebrated Macedonian king has been one of the most enduring figures in history. He was a general of such skill and renown that for two thousand years other great leaders studied his strategy and tactics, from Hannibal to Napoleon, with countless more in between. He f...

The Romans regarded her as "fatale monstrum" -- a fatal omen. Pascal said the shape of her nose changed the history of the world. Shakespeare portrayed her as an icon of tragic love. But who was Cleopatra, really?We almost feel that we know Cleopatra, but our distorted image of a self-destructive beauty does no justice to Cleopatra's true genius. In Cleopatra, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley offers an unexpectedly vivid portrait of a skillful Egyptian ruler. Strippin...

Istanbul's history is a catalogue of change, not least of name, yet it has managed to retain its own unique identity. John Freely captures the flavour of daily life as well as court ceremonial and intrigue. The book also includes a comprehensive gazetteer of all major monuments and museums. An in-depth study of this legendary city through its many different ages from its earliest foundation to the present day - the perfect traveller's companion and guide.

Few personalities from classical antiquity are more famous--yet more poorly understood--than Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt. In this major biography, Duane Roller reveals that Cleopatra was in fact a learned and visionary leader whose overarching goal was always the preservation of her dynasty and kingdom. Roller's authoritative account is the first to be based solely on primary materials from the Greco-Roman period: literary sources, Egyptian documents (Cleopatra's own writings), and repre...

For more than two millennia Istanbul has stood at the crossroads of the world, perched at the very tip of Europe, gazing across at the shores of Asia. The history of this city—known as Byzantium, then Constantinople, now Istanbul—is at once glorious, outsized, and astounding. Founded by the Greeks, its location blessed it as a center for trade but also made it a target of every empire in history, from Alexander the Great and his Macedonian Empire, to the Romans and later the Ottomans....

A “splendid” (The Wall Street Journal) account of one of ancient history’s most important and yet little-known wars, the campaign culminating in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, whose outcome determined the future of the Roman Empire.Following Caesar’s assassination and Mark Antony’s defeat of the conspirators who killed Caesar, two powerful men remained in Rome—Antony and Caesar’s chosen heir, young Octavian, the future Aug...