One of a series of top-quality fiction for schools, this is a retelling of 32 legends from Greek mythology.

One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, masterfully portraying Medea's pursuit of vengeance. Warner translation.

'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.'

Written four hundred years before the birth of Christ, this detailed contemporary account of the long life-and-death struggle between Athens and Sparta stands an excellent chance of fulfilling its author's ambitious claim. Thucydides himself (c.460-400 BC) was an Athenian and achieved the rank of general in the earlier stages of the war. He applied thereafter a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth and romance in compiling this factual record of a disastrous conflict.

Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesman of the classical period. Taken from the Lives, a series of biographies spanning the Graeco-Roman age, this collection illuminates the twilight of the old Roman Republic from 157-43 bc. Whether describing the would-be dictators Marius and Sulla, the battle between Crassus and Spartacus, the death of political idealist Crato, Julius Caesar's harrowing triumph in Gaul or the eloquent oratory of Cicero, all offer a fascinating insight into an empire wracked by political divisions. Deeply influential on Shakespeare and many other later writers, they continue to fascinate today with their exploration of corruption, decadence and the struggle for ultimate power.

Xenophon’s epic march into the heart of Persia has stirred the imagination of free men for centuries.

Written possibly from diaries compiled at the time, there is no doubt that The Persian Expedition is one of the best pictures we have of Greeks confronting the ‘barbarian’ world. We see the soldiers debate leaders and strategy in open assembly; we see them falling on their knees in superstitious fear; we see them planning a piratical colony on barbarian land. And at the same time we share the rigours of the march to Babylon, the dismay of unexpected defeat, the uncertainty of the long road home through wild Armenia, and the relief at last when the Ten Thousand reach ‘the sea, the sea!’.

First published in 1941, The Aerodrome is one of the few works of fiction in the twentieth century to understand the dangerous yet glamorous appeal of fascism and the less than satisfactory answer of traditional democracy-and to transmute their deadly opposition into terms of enduring art. Mr. Warner brilliantly invents, on one side, a thoroughly degenerate Village representing fallen man, and on the other side a great Aerodrome dedicated to ruthless efficiency. The ideological struggle between the idealistic Air Vice-Marshal and the hero-narrator from the Village is portrayed with poetry, narrative speed, and great simplicity of language. It is a great symbolic novel of our time. "The value of The Aerodrome as literature becomes increasingly apparent at each rereading ... an intensely original work."-Anthony Burgess. "A moral dialogue thrown into narrative form. It is humanity versus power, sprawling fife versus death-dealing regimentation.... A parable worth reading."-New York Times. "The beauty of his prose, unsurpassed by any living English writer, has nothing to do with `fine writing' but springs from a sound moral core and from an intelligence with the keenest edge."-C. Day Lewis.

Continuing the story of the Peloponnesian War where Thucydides left off, Xenophon records the politics and battles that brought about the ultimate decline of Greece.