Ancient Rome/Medieval Book Reccomendations

[Solamnicknight]

Hello everyone, I was hoping you guys could give me some recommendations on some good non-fiction books about both Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. I have an interest in those time periods so I like to learn as much as I can. :smallsmile:

[Brother Oni]

Hello everyone, I was hoping you guys could give me some recommendations on some good non-fiction books about both Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. I have an interest in those time periods so I like to learn as much as I can. :smallsmile:

When you say the Middle Ages, I assume you mean in Western Europe?

[Serpentine]

About, or from? Because I strongly recommend reading Civil War, by the one and the only Julius Caesar himself. Seriously, I can't get over the fact that we have a first-hand account of a hugely important event of ancient history straight from one of the most important people in ancient history. Blows my mind.
Herodotus' The Histories is also worth a look, but it's very long and very dry and you should keep in mind that he was called the Father of Lies as well as the Father of History.

About those periods, I have a few from my studies. I'll tell you then when I get home if I remember.

[Aedilred]

Hello everyone, I was hoping you guys could give me some recommendations on some good non-fiction books about both Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. I have an interest in those time periods so I like to learn as much as I can. :smallsmile:

I'm neither a medievalist nor an antiquarian in any serious sense, but both periods have been the subject of some extensive scholarship, obviously, and cover between them a period of getting on for 2,000 years (depending on when you take the start of Ancient Rome - the Romans faffed about for a while before doing much of significance), so narrowing it down would be helpful. There are thousands of books on the subject, after all.

It also depends on what sort of history you're interested in: coffee-table books; highbrow pop-history, proper academic study or contemporary sources. Or all of the above. Trends in history change over time, and new sources and interpretations are being discovered all the time, so histories that were at one point fairly definitive have long since fallen out of fashion even if they're still respected as works of scholarship. However, modern trends in history are such that the big narrative works of old haven't really been replaced: they've been overwritten almost entirely, but in detail rather than in full.

For contemporary sources on Rome, check out Caesar, as Serp mentioned, Livy, Suetonius, Tacitus and Plutarch. For the Middle Ages, it will depend heavily on the period and region you're interested in. Anna Komnena, Matthew Paris and Jean Froissart are all worth checking out - the former for early Crusades-era Byzantium, the latter for the High and Late Middle Ages in the west.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon is the classic text on the later days of Rome. It's obviously long been superseded now by modern scholarship, being more than two hundred years old, but has yet to be surpassed for influence or, if I'm honest, readability. There are worse places to start, so long as you take everything you read there with a large pile of salt.

In a similar vein is Stephen Runciman's Crusades trilogy. This is a much more modern work than Gibbon, but likewise is slightly dated now.

Relatively broad-scope books from historians still writing (and thus more in line with current thought!) worth checking out include Judith Herrin's Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire which serves as a useful introduction to the Byzantine Empire. More popular, but still to be taken seriously, is Ian Mortimer's series of biographies which cover English history from roughly 1300 to 1415, and his Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England which is a good introduction to English social history. Mortimer is not without controversy, particularly over one of his theories, but is nevertheless worth a read if you're interested in that period at all. Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms is an excellent introduction to some entities that have in some cases fallen out of popular recollection altogether, and his God's Playground (vol. 1) is just about the best general history of pre-modern Poland available in English.

There are of course countless other books out there and the above will barely scratch the surface I'm sure!

[veti]

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Mirror) is worth a read, for a modernist take on the motives and driving forces of the late middle ages.

Henri Pirenne's Mohammed and Charlemagne (https://www.questia.com/read/73972933/mohammed-and-charlemagne) is... dated, and you may find it a bit dry, but I think it's quite a persuasive account of the transition from "Roman" to "Medieval" Europe.

[Solamnicknight]

Should have been more specific about region, sorry. Got up at 4AM for work and wasn't thinking too clearly. :smallsigh: By Middle Ages I meant Western Europe of course. I also want to learn about the Crusades so I think I should read about the Ottoman Empire as well to get a balanced perspective.

[Crow]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon is the classic text on the later days of Rome. It's obviously long been superseded now by modern scholarship, being more than two hundred years old, but has yet to be surpassed for influence or, if I'm honest, readability. There are worse places to start, so long as you take everything you read there with a large pile of salt.

I can recommend this one as well. The scholarship is a lot better than modern authors give it credit for.

[Aedilred]

Should have been more specific about region, sorry. Got up at 4AM for work and wasn't thinking too clearly. :smallsigh: By Middle Ages I meant Western Europe of course. I also want to learn about the Crusades so I think I should read about the Ottoman Empire as well to get a balanced perspective.

Note that the Ottoman Empire and what are generally thought of as the Crusades don't overlap. The Empire was founded in 1299 (although took a few more decades to establish itself properly) and the Crusades in Outremer finished a few years before that. There were other holy wars in Spain, North Africa and the Baltic region which continued into the fifteenth and arguably the sixteenth century, as well as the odd event like the Crusade of Nicopolis, but "the Crusades" were essentially over by the time the Ottomans appeared as significant figures.

The Muslim civilisations which opposed the Crusaders were the Abbasid Caliphate and to a lesser extent the Fatimid Caliphate, although the history of the Crusades is complex. If you want to look at it from that perspective there are worse places to start than Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples which covers the whole of Arab history until the present day but has a reasonable section on that era.

I have no particular recommendations on northern France, Italy or Germany for the Middle Ages as most of my knowledge there is second-hand and medieval Spain has received frustratingly little mainstream historical attention in English for some reason. Southern French medieval history is somewhat inevitably dominated by Cathar history, for which I'd recommend The Perfect Heresy by Stephen O'Shea and The Yellow Cross by René Weis. For England, aside from the books I mentioned earlier, you could do worse than Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, with the usual caveats about age, scholarly development and salt-taking.

[Solamnicknight]

I can recommend this one as well. The scholarship is a lot better than modern authors give it credit for.

Got this the complete works of Julius Caesar and Barbra Tuchman's a distant mirror last night. I read a bit of the beginning of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire just to get a feel for it. Very well written book. I'll probably write down all the titles you guys recommended and thanks for the help.

[Brother Oni]

I found The Crusades: An Illustrated History by W.B. Bartlett, a very readable book about the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

[GolemsVoice]

I can definitely recommend Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror", having read it myself. That was some Game-of-Thrones stuff going on in France back then.

[Yanagi]

Hello everyone, I was hoping you guys could give me some recommendations on some good non-fiction books about both Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. I have an interest in those time periods so I like to learn as much as I can. :smallsmile:

Tom Holland-- Rubicon: the last years of the Roman Republic
Anthony Everett: The Rise of Rome

and indirectly about Rome:

Richard Miles-- Carthage Must Be Destroyed
Adrienn Mayor--The Poison King

I suggest these because they provide an outside-looking-in perspective on the Roman expansion, and also because the Romans themselves referenced these conflicts as cultural milestones.

[Closet_Skeleton]

You really have to read the big primary sources on Rome (Caesar and Tactitus) but that kind of limits you to a two-hundred year period. Its probably the period you meant by 'ancient Rome' though. Then you should really read commentaries on what you just read because Caesar is writing his own propaganda and Tacitus is usually using what he appears to be writing about as a veiled description of something else (eg Germania appears to be about actually about the Germans but is actually about Tacitus' idealised idea of what Rome used to be like before it got all decadent and The Annalsclaims to be about Nero who died when Tacitus was a young boy but is probably based on Tacitus' adult experiences under Domitian).


When you say the Middle Ages, I assume you mean in Western Europe?

Middle ages pretty much does just mean Europe. Using periods outside of their geographical context leads to issues.



Herodotus' The Histories is also worth a look, but it's very long and very dry and you should keep in mind that he was called the Father of Lies as well as the Father of History.

Herodotus isn't dry, but that will depend on translation and personal taste. Or about Ancient Rome in the slightest.


Note that the Ottoman Empire and what are generally thought of as the Crusades don't overlap.

The Crusade of Varna is the exception to this.


Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms is an excellent introduction to some entities that have in some cases fallen out of popular recollection altogether,

Is only partly about the middle ages. The longest sections are about 20th century nations.

[Dienekes]

Ehh, more modern research tends to be more accurate and with additional details, such as cemetery, weather data, and so on, than Gibbons, and a hell of a lot less dry.

For military history: Soldiers and Ghosts tells an interesting idea on the development of the Roman military, and it's decline.

Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568 is pretty interesting account of Roman and Barbarian relationships up to the fall of Rome. Notably takes a contrary view to Gibbon in he blames the fall more on the rise of the barbarians as powerful forces in their own right, than Gibbons who mostly says the Roman people became lax and effeminate. (Gross oversimplification of both of their arguments)

Then of course, the classics: Suetonius, Tacitus, Caesar. Though be warned going in. Each of them is incredibly biased. Roman historians were very much into the idea that they shaped history as a story to tell what they wanted it to tell. An obvious example, each of Caesar's defeats as written by Caesar are all very much not his fault. It's always the soldiers acting up, or the weather getting in the way. Probably, because he's trying to build himself up as this great commander (which he undoubtedly was) and so he casts his less glamorous moments in a light that better suits him.

For Dark Age stuff, we have some law codes. The Burgundian one is pretty interesting, and complete, which gives you a pretty interesting idea of what life was like, judging by what they emphasized as laws. Can be compared to Roman law to see how they relate.

[Telonius]

"The Fall of Constantinople: 1453" by Steven Runciman is a terrific one. Very readable, and gives a really interesting account of a very important event that many Euro-centric histories of the Middle Ages gloss over.

Extra credit: After you've finished it, read Tolkien's account of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, and spot as many similarities as you can. :smallcool:

[Cikomyr]

Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is a fantastic historical novel. Speculation is made to make sense of historical facts, as well as personalities of displayed characters.

And yet, it sucks you in. It goes all the way from Gaius Marius's first real political victories all the way to Augustus's triumph. Going through the Pontic Wars, the Social Wars, Sulla's Dictatorship, Pompey's ascension, Spartakis's Rebellion, Caesar's struggles against the Optimates, Caesar's Civil War and Assassination and Succession.

A true 7-books epic