One of the foundational works of military history and political philosophy, and an inspiration for Alexander the Great, the Anabasis of Cyrus recounts the epic story of the Ten Thousand, a band of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to overthrow his brother, Artaxerxes, king of Persia and the most powerful man on earth. It shows how Cyrus' army was assembled covertly and led from the coast of Asia Minor all the way to Babylon; how the Greeks held the field against a superior Persian force; how Cyrus was killed, leaving the Greeks stranded deep within enemy territory; and how many of them overcame countless dangers and found their way back to Greece.

Their remarkable success was due especially to the wily and decisive leadership of Xenophon himself, a student of Socrates who had joined the Ten Thousand and, after most of the Greek generals had been murdered, rallied the despondent Greeks, won a position of leadership, and guided them wisely through myriad obstacles.

In this new translation of the Anabasis, Wayne Ambler achieves a masterful combination of liveliness and a fidelity to the original uncommon in other versions. Accompanying Ambler's translation is a penetrating interpretive essay by Eric Buzzetti, one that shows Xenophon to be an author who wove a philosophic narrative into his dramatic tale. The translation and interpretive essay encourage renewed study of the Anabasis as a work of political philosophy. They also celebrate its high adventure and its hero's adroit decision-making under the most pressing circumstances.

Greeks and Barbarians examines ancient Greek conceptions of the "other." The attitudes of Greeks to foreigners and there religions, and cultures, and politics reveals as much about the Greeks as it does the world they inhabited. Despite occasional interest in particular aspects of foreign customs, the Greeks were largely hostile and dismissive viewing foreigners as at best inferior, but more often as candidates for conquest and enslavement.

The Greek Achievement is a marvellous narrative account of the ancient Greeks from the Myceneans (1500 bc) to the emergence of the Byzantine empire (600 ad). Readable and lively, it draws heavily on recent research to create a modern and intelligent history which allows us to understand extraordinary world of the eastern Mediterranean and the events - political, social, economic and cultural - which continue to have such an overwhelming impact on the way we view our world.

The work of the Christian scholar Lactantius provides an ideal lens through which to study how Rome became a Christian empire. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser shows how Lactantius' Divine Institutes -- seditious in its time -- responded to the emperor Diocletian's persecution and then became an important influence on Constantine the Great, Rome's first Christian emperor.

The Making of a Christian Empire is the first full-length book to interpret the Divine Institutes as a historical source. Exploring Lactantius' use of theology, philosophy, and rhetorical techniques, Digeser perceives the Divine Institutes as a sophisticated proposal for a monotheistic state that intimately connected the religious policies of Diocletian and Constantine, both of whom used religion to fortify and unite the Roman Empire. For Digeser, Lactantius' writings justify Constantine's own attitude of tolerance toward pagans and casts light upon other puzzling features of Constantine's religious policy. Her book contributes importantly to rail understanding of the political and religious tensions of the early fourth century.

Italian and Greek finewares are found all around the coast of Eastern Spain. This book catalogues finds from the 3rd Century BC and attempts to show how the trade worked, and especially how indigenous societies interpreted and used the foreign imports.

The author of this text (translated in this volume from the original French) elucidates how Athenian politics were gendered in the classical period. She investigates the Athenian state's interdiction of ritualized mourning by women, in a city where public mourning constituted a vital act of civic self-definition and solidarity.

Intended as both a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, this volume takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He explores, for example, the hypercritical philology of the 19th century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological discoveries and changing archaeological techniques influenced the story of Rome's birth.

This work gives students of all levels access to a comprehensive collection of primary sources on the early history of Italy, from the early expansion of Roman power to the first emmergence of Italy as a unified and cultural political unit. The sources, presented in translation, cover the Roman conquest of Italy, the mechanisms used by Rome to govern Italy and the post-conquest process of Romanization. These include inscriptions, coins and archaeological evidence where necessary. Brief explanatory notes are given and each chapter has an introduction in which the nature of the source material is discussed, together with the major questions raised by that particular aspect of the subject.

This handsomely illustrated book offers a broad synthesis of Archaic Greek culture. Unlike other books dealing with the art and architecture of the Archaic period, it places these subjects in their historical, social, literary, and intellectual contexts. Origins and originality constitute a central theme, for during this period representational and narrative art, monumental sculpture and architecture, epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, the city-state (polis), tyranny and early democracy, and natural philosophy were all born.

This engrossing book was the first ever investigation into the plight of the disabled and deformed in Graeco-Roman society, drawing on a wealth of material, including literary texts, medical tracts, vase paintings, sculpture, mythology and ethnography. It is now issued in paperback for the first time with a new preface and updated bibliography.

The Romans conquered most of the known world and detailed their conquests in calm, unapologetic histories. They were a supremely urbane people who longed poetically for the farming life. Valuing toughness and practicality in all things, they turned the love poem into a cynical rebuke and wrote tragedies in which the unfathomable actions of gods gave way to the staggering cruelties of man. As the empire slid into decay, Tacitus pulled back the curtain on the perverse intrigues of the emperors, and a Roman-educated Christian named Augustine recounted his spiritual awakening in what may be the world's first psychological novel.

This collection presents the essential writings of the Romans in their finest English translations: the comedies of Terence and Plautus; the histories of Julius Caesar, Livy and Tacitus; the oratory of Cicero; poems by Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Martial; the philosophy of Lucretius and Boethius, along with the stylishly narrated and often ribald myths of Ovid and Apuleius.

This extensive volume presents the evidence uncovered by the British School at Rome between 1965 and 1974 for the Iron Age city of Silvium in Apulia, and for the Roman settlement that succeeded it. Its eight essays concentrate especially on the defences of the city of the late fourth century BC, the economic and social transformation of the settlement in the middle of the second century BC, and an osteological analysis of a sample of the burials from the sixth to the first centuries BC. Contributors include: A S Small; P G Dorrell; A C Western; J P Taylor; M Hassall; K Gruspier; G Mullen.

In the third and final book which he wrote about his campaigns in the Civil War, Caesar tells the story of his fight with Pompey in 48 B.C. which ended in the rout of the latter at Pharsalus, perhaps Caesar's most notable military victory. The book ends with Caesar pursuing Pompey to Egypt. Here began Caesar's celebrated affair with Cleopatra. At this point the book, and the whole work, ends abruptly.With this volume the author's edition and commentary on Caesar's Civil War becomes the first complete commentary in English for a hundred years and is considerably more detailed than currently available annotated texts and translations in other languages. The main emphasis of the commentary, as before, is historical, but Caesar's literary technique is also scrutinised. The Latin text is newly constituted with a brief apparatus criticus. Latin text with facing-page translation, introduction and commentary.

Analyzing the "democratic" features and institutions of the Athenian democracy in the fifth century B.C., Martin Ostwald traces their development from Solon's judicial reforms to the flowering of popular sovereignty, when the people assumed the right both to enact all legislation and to hold magistrates accountable for implementing what had been enacted.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.