Ancient Biography

Read by the author. A Pilgrimage of Faith, Doubt, and Rediscovery In Chasing Francis, bestselling author Ian Morgan Cron's modern and penetrating novel, the timeless wisdom of Saint Francis of Assisi is blended with the very real struggles of a modern-day pastor. When faced with the tragic death...

The definitive biography of the father and son who reshaped the ancient world. “Brings to life the full drama of ancient history.” —Wall Street Journal Alexander the Great's conquests staggered the world. He led his army across thousands of miles, overthrowing the greatest empires of his...

Alexander was born into the royal family of Macedonia, the kingdom that would soon rule over Greece. Tutored as a boy by Aristotle, Alexander had an inquisitive mind that would serve him well when he faced formidable obstacles during his military campaigns. Shortly after taking command of the army, he launched an invasion of the Persian Empire, and continued his conquests as far south as the deserts of Egypt and as far east as the mountains of present-day Pakistan and the plains of India.

The ancient historian Josephus is key to a proper understanding of the time of Christ and the early church era. This recording, an abridged paraphrase of two Josephus histories, will transport you back in time to the period 37 B.C. to A.D. 70, from the time Herod took Jerusalem to become "King of the Jews," to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an...

He was less a philosopher than a living riddle—half trickster, half martyr, faithful to a strange inner voice that refused to be polite. Socrates & The Art of Questioning strips away hagiography and hearsay to show a man who laughed at himself, annoyed the powerful, and put the soul ahead of safety. This is not a dusty textbook or a cheerleader’s biography. It’s a tight, restless portrait of a thinker who turned questioning into an art form, who weaponized curiosity against complacency, and who made Athens uncomfortable in the only way that counts: by asking better questions. Read for...

Este audiolibro relata la historia de Alejandro Magno, rey de Macedonia, que soñó y luchó por conseguir un gran imperio que uniera Oriente y Occidente y fusionara la cultura helénica con la asiática. En ese sentido, Charles Mercer se detiene, primero, en narrar la forma en que Alejandro configuró su personalidad gracias a su sólida formación atlética y militar y, sobre todo, a su gran desarrollo intelectual debido, especialmente, a que estuvo bajo la tutela de Aristóteles.

Jerusalem lies in ruins. Her citizens are taxed, used, and oppressed in every way, by local and foreign rulers. Her altars are neglected, her houses and walls are piles of rubble, permitting jackals and thieves to enter in. When Nehemiah, cupbearer to king of the Persian empire, hears of these atrocities, he is shattered. Soon, however, he is prompted by his God to leave the safety of the Citadel and go rebuild the City of David. From the moment he arrives, enemies try to stop him. Attempts on his life increase, when local authorities realize Nehemiah has the support of the people. Made ...

Ancient Near Eastern texts such as The Baal Cycle portray the pagan god Baal as a rebel—the hero of a revolution, worshiped and glorified for his long string of victories. In The Baal Book: A Biography of the Devil, Fr. Stephen De Young shows that the Hebrew Scriptures consciously turn the Baal story on its head, depicting him as a failed and defeated rebel who nonetheless tries to steal the glory that belongs to Almighty God. From these Scriptures, the figure of the Devil emerged within Jewish and Christian Tradition.

The War of the Three Gods is a military history of the Near and Middle East in the seventh century - with its chief focus on the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius (AD 610-641) - a pivotal and dramatic time in world history. The Eastern Roman Empire was brought to the very brink of extinction by the Sassanid Persians before Heraclius managed to inflict a crushing defeat on the Sassanids with a desperate, final gambit.

Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is one of antiquity’s most ambitious studies of leadership, power, education, and empire. Written in the fourth century BCE, the Cyropaedia—or The Education of Cyrus—presents Xenophon’s account of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire. It is not a conventional biography. Xenophon uses the life of Cyrus to ask a larger political question: what kind of person can persuade others not merely to obey, but to follow willingly? The story begins with Cyrus as a boy, educated in the disciplined customs of Persia but exposed to the wealth and ceremony of the ...

This epic chronicle by Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) continues with the lives of great Grecians and Romans. These biographies of the men who created the ancient world are brought to life in this new, high-quality recording. Legends such as Caesar, Alexander, Cicero, Demosthenes, and many others come alive as their politics, economy, and their individual stories play out in the time of the ancients. This translation is by John Dryden and is considered by scholars to be the quintessential translation.

One dog’s love. One man’s journey. When Matthew Sigman’s beloved dog, Augie, died, his world fell apart. His boyfriend broke up with him. His work dried up. Even the ceiling of his West Village apartment collapsed. Heartbroken and adrift, Matthew did the only thing he could—he ran. An...

The Sunday Times number one bestselling author returns to Ancient Rome in his latest thriller. Narrated by Simon Russel Beale. Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has made his heir. The...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the acclaimed author of No god but God comes “a lucid, intelligent page-turner” (Los Angeles Times) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus. “Riveting . . . [Reza] Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account...

A vibrant, colorful, and authoritative exploration of the world's first and most illustrious metropolis. 'Babylon' is a name that has a double life: it denotes the great ancient Mesopotamian city with a long and complex history, and it is also a fictive allusion with a wide variety of...

Aristotle's Politics does not finish. Its last page is about music and the education of the young, and the sentence in which the treatise stops has a hole in it — a translator's honest hyphen marking a gap nobody has ever filled. Two sentences earlier, Aristotle is in the middle of correcting Socrates about a point of musical theory. The largest work of political classification produced in antiquity ends still arguing with a character from somebody else's book, and never reaches the end of its own sentence. Plato's Republic ends differently. Two books after expelling poets from the ideal ...

Named a “Best Book of the 21st Century” by Kirkus Reviews, this biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author brings to life the most intriguing woman in history: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and...

The fall of Troy. A hero carrying his father out of the flames. A queen on a burning pyre. The founding of the greatest empire the world has known. Virgil's Aeneid is the poem that gave Rome its myth and gave Europe one of its founding epics — the story of Aeneas, the Trojan prince who escapes his city's ruin and sails west, through storm and war and the underworld itself, to found the race that will become Rome. This Erato Press edition presents the Aeneid complete in the classic verse translation of John Dryden, with an original critical essay and a life of the poet. THE POEM From the ...