the Greek text and an English translation of Plutarch’s biography of the great Athenian naval commander (one of the best of his Lives), along with a detailed commentary covering the entire period of the Delian League and its campaigns against the Persian Empire.
Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbraun, 2002. Valuable for its comprehensive assembling of texts and ancient references to Persian history, religion, and culture. Not really a “history,” as the title claims, but a gigantic historiographical essay about the author’s evaluation of the various sources. Difficult to use because of the idiosyncratic ordering of material and the skimpy index.
Broad, William. The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi. New York: Penguin, 2006. A study of the geology and history of Delphi and its famous oracle, including an account of interdisciplinary work conducted at the site by geologist Jelle de Boer and archaeologist John Hale.
Burn, A. R. Persia and the Greeks: The Defense of the West, c. 546–478 B.C. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1962. The best history of the early stages of the Greek and Persian wars, written by a scholar who fought in Greece during World War II and, thus, could view such sites as Thermopylae with a soldier’s eye. Eminently clear and practical throughout, with handy maps and diagrams of battlefields. Burn’s working out of the day-by-day diary of Xerxes’s fleet and army from August to September 480 B.C. is alone worth the price of the book.
Camp, John, and Elizabeth Fisher. The World of the Ancient Greeks. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002. An excellent introduction to archaeological sites and discoveries in Greece. The authors combine their account of sites and artifacts with a historical survey. Copiously illustrated.
Cartledge, Paul. Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World. New York: Vintage, 2006. An enthusiastic retelling of the Spartan stand at the “Hot Gates” under King Leonidas, written by a prominent scholar and champion of the Spartan military ethos.
De Sélincourt, Aubrey. The World of Herodotus. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1963. Written by a distinguished translator of Herodotus’s histories, this book includes substantial sections on Herodotus’s life, Greece before the Greek and Persian wars, the campaigns of Darius and Xerxes, Greek literature, and the city-state.
De Souza, Philip. The Greek and Persian Wars, 499–386 B.C. London: Routledge, 2003. A well-illustrated introduction to the events and issues in the period from the Ionian revolt to the King’s Peace.
Farrokh, Kaveh. Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War. Oxford: Osprey, 2007. Fascinating, well organized, and beautifully illustrated, with maps as well as photographs of important sites and artifacts. The first third of the
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book covers Achaemenid Persia and the period of the Greek and Persian wars; the remainder carries the story down to the Islamic conquest.
Fitzhardinge, L. F. The Spartans. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980. An excellent introduction to Spartan civilization, art, and religion, offering a corrective to the stereotypical view of the Spartans as either noble heroes or single-minded killing machines. As the title page states: “150 illustrations”!
Gorman, Vanessa. Miletos: The Ornament of Ionia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. A scholarly monograph that assembles historical and archaeological information about the greatest Greek city in Asia Minor.
Green, Peter. Alexander of Macedon. London: Pelican, 1974. A vivid retelling of Alexander’s life and adventures.
———. The Year of Salamis, 480–479 B.C. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1970. A well-known scholar presents a compelling reconstruction of Xerxes’s doomed invasion of Greece.
Hanson, Victor Davis. The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. New York: Knopf, 1989. A compact but revolutionary book by the foremost American scholar of ancient Greek military history.
Harper, Prudence O., et. al., eds. The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. New York: Harry Abrams, 1992. A lavishly illustrated exhibition catalog, with an excellent introductory essay and spectacular coverage of early Elamite Susa, as well as Susa during its years as a royal Persian capital city.
Heckel, Waldemar, and Ryan Jones. Macedonian Warrior: Alexander’s Elite Infantryman. Westminster: Osprey, 2006. A short but lavishly illustrated study, with many modern reconstructions of battlefield scenes and armed soldiers. This title is included as an example of one of the many handbooks published by Osprey on military history, a number of which also provide specialist studies related to the Greek and Persian wars.
Herodotus. The Histories. Aubrey de Sélincourt, trans. New York: Penguin, 2003. The primary source for the Greek and Persian wars from the beginning down to 479 B.C. This classic translation is revised and introduced by John M. Marincola.
Hignett, C. Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963. The great value of this work lies not in Hignett’s narrative of Xerxes’s expedition (as is the case with Peter Green’s book) but in his obsessive quest for the original sources from which Herodotus may have drawn the details of his account. Good topographical discussions of the battlefields and the line of march are also included.
How, W. W., and J. Wells. A Commentary on Herodotus. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912. The granddaddy of all commentaries on Herodotus’s account of the rise of Persia and the expedition of Xerxes. Incredibly, even after almost a century of additional scholarship and discoveries, no one has published a book that supersedes this one.
Isocrates. Orations. George Norlin, trans. London: Heinemann, 1928. This is the Loeb Classical Library three-volume edition of Isocrates’s orations, including the great “Panegyricus,” in which he urged Panhellenic unity and a Greek invasion of Persia led by Athens. Contains the Greek text with the English translation on the facing pages.
Kagan, Donald. The Fall of the Athenian Empire. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. A detailed reconstruction of the years from 413 B.C. to 404 B.C., including reconstructions of Cyzicus and other battles in which the Persians attempted to aid the Spartan effort to destroy Athens. In addition to the narrative account, the author includes an analysis of the ancient sources (Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and others) and a review of modern scholarship and opinions.
Kuhrt, Amélie. The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period. New York: Routledge, 2007. This pioneering work in two volumes is the source book that historians have been waiting for: vast in scope, clear in organization, and beautifully (if minimally) illustrated. The texts, translated from a number of ancient languages, are grouped so as to provide a chronological survey of Persian history, followed by thematic chapters on such topics as kingship, religion, and the economy; the only failing is an unhelpful index. Take out a second mortgage and order your copy today!
Lazenby, J. F. The Defence of Greece, 490–479 BC. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1993. A military history of the years from the Marathon campaign to the battles of Plataea and Mycale.
Lenardon, Robert J. The Saga of Themistocles. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978. The best introduction to the visionary statesman, general, and strategist who engineered the Greek victory at Salamis and the transformation of Athens into a dominant naval power.
Lyle, Evelyn. The Search for the Royal Road. London: Vision Press, 1966. An illuminating personal account of a journey overland from Sardis to Susa, illustrated by the author’s own photographs.
Miller, Helen Hill. Bridge to Asia: The Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean. New York: Scribner, 1967. Not a scholarly history but a perceptive travelogue of Asia Minor and the eastern Aegean islands. Engagingly written, with photographs of the modern ruins and excellent maps.
Morrison, John, J. F. Coates, and N. B. Rankov. The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. An account of the Athenian trireme and its history, including sections on individual battles, by the team behind the designing and sea trials of the replica trireme Olympias.
Moscati, Sabatino, ed. The Phoenicians. New York: Rizzoli, 1999. A rich collection of papers that introduce the Phoenicians: master mariners of antiquity and the chief providers of ships to the navies of the Great Kings of Persia.
Myres, John Linton. Herodotus: Father of History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953. An indispensable reconstruction of Herodotus’s life, travels, purpose, achievement, and critics. Such over-imaginative passages as Myres’s account of Salamis (one of the few pieces of serious scholarship that merits the epithet “zany”) are more than balanced by the exhaustive approach, the intriguing analysis of the structure of Histories, and the author’s love of his subject.
Olmstead, A. T. History of the Persian Empire: Achaemenid Period. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. A narrative of the Achaemenid kings and their realm, from Cyrus to Alexander the Great.
Plutarch. The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives. Ian Scott-Kilvert, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973. This handy compendium brings together Ian Scott-Kilvert’s translations of the lives of Alexander, Agesilaus, Demosthenes, and other leaders.
———. Plutarch on Sparta, rev. ed. Richard Talbert, trans. London: Penguin, 2005. Before Richard Talbert tackled the Herculean task of mapping the classical world for the Barrington Atlas, he translated a number of biographies and essays by Plutarch that create a composite portrait of the ancient Spartans, both men and women. An essay attributed to Xenophon, with a description of Spartan society and military organization, is included as an appendix.
———. The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives. Ian Scott-Kilvert, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960. Ian Scott-Kilvert’s translations make essential reading for anyone interested in the lives and times of such leaders as Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Alcibiades, and Lysander.
Podlecki, Anthony J. The Life of Themistocles: A Critical Survey of the Literary and Archaeological Evidence. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975. Not a conventional biography but, as the subtitle states, a systematic review of the evidence, grouped under such headings as “Plutarch,” “Coins,” and “Buildings and Walls.”
Pritchett, W. Kendrick. Marathon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. A review of ancient sources, firsthand accounts of the terrain, and detailed reconstructions of the great battle of 490 B.C., in which Athenians defeated a Persian expeditionary force. Written by the most famous military topographer of his generation.
Renault, Mary. The Nature of Alexander. London: Allen Lane, 1975. An extended essay on the character of Alexander the Great and the ancient evidence that alternately seems to illuminate and obscure our view of him. This book grew out of the research Renault conducted before writing her Alexander trilogy of historical novels, and she brings a novelist’s sensibility to her reconstruction. I have taken from Renault the suggestion that the setting for Alexander’s early feat in taming Bucephalus was a public horse fair, not a private royal showing.
Rosenbloom, David. Aeschylus: Persians. London: Duckworth, 2006. A superb introduction to the oldest surviving play in the world, to the circumstances of its creation, and to its later performance history.
Seltman, Charles Theodore. Athens, Its History and Coinage before the Persian Invasion. Chicago: Ares, 1974. Much broader in scope than the title suggests, this book by numismatist Seltman offers provocative theories about the coins minted from the famous Athenian silver strike and the use of special emblems on Attic coins to encode the city’s celebration of its victories over the Persians.
Smith, John Sharwood. Greece and the Persians. London: Duckworth, 2002. Written in short sections for easy reading and reference, this is not a comprehensive history but, rather, a compact introduction to three topics: the Persian background, the campaign of Xerxes, and the expedition of the Ten Thousand.
Stark, Freya. Ionia: A Quest. London: J. Murray, 1954. In 1952, the author visited 55 archaeological sites in Turkey and the Aegean islands, at a time when the remains of Ionia were so little known that she encountered another tourist at only one (Pergamon). Stark is a master at interweaving the story of her own journey with retellings of Herodotus and other ancient sources. The book is worth seeking out just for the first double-page map, in which modern place names and land contours in black and white are overlaid with the ancient Greek place names in red.
Talbert, Richard J. A., et. al., eds. The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. A monument of scholarship and cartography, this huge atlas includes not only the
Mediterranean but ancient sites from Scotland to Sri Lanka. Invaluable for studying the topography of the Persian Empire, as well as the Greek world.
Tatum, James. Xenophon’s Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. An important work of scholarship that considers Xenophon’s Cyropaedia both as a historical source and as a forerunner of the modern novel.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, rev. ed. Rex Warner, trans. Baltimore: Penguin, 1954. This classic text by Thucydides deals with the Persian influence on Athens and Sparta in Book 8 of the unfinished history, covering the years from 413 B.C. to 410 B.C.
Time-Life Books, ed. Persians: Masters of Empire. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1995. This Lost Civilizations volume shares the virtues of the rest of the series: authoritative authors and contributors, an emphasis on archaeology and important sites, special essays (in this case, on such topics as Persepolis and the royal tribute), an up-to-date presentation of recent research, and of course, dazzling photographs (many of them archival and hard to find elsewhere).
Trundle, Matthew. Greek Mercenaries: From the Late Archaic Period to Alexander. London: Routledge, 2004. An up-to-date survey of current scholarship on mercenaries in their social and economic settings, rather than on the battlefield. The book provides a good background for an understanding of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand.
Tuplin, Christopher, ed. Persian Responses: Political and Cultural Interaction with(in) the Achaemenid Empire. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2007. As the cute typography of the subtitle suggests, the 14 essays in this book are more revealing of current academic trends than of substantial new insights into Persian history and civilization. You will want it for the sake of half a dozen superb essays, headed by Alan Lloyd on Darius in Egypt, Robin Lane Fox on Alexander as the “last of the Achaemenids,” and Lindsay Allen and St. John Simpson with two views of the rediscovery of Persepolis by early travelers.
Warry, John Gibson. Warfare in the Classical World. London: Salamander Books, 1980. The subtitle says it all: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors, and Warfare in the Ancient Civilizations of Greece and Rome.
Wartenberg, Ute. After Marathon: War, Society and Money in Fifth-Century Greece. London: British Museum Press, 1995. An absorbing study of Greek history as seen through the lens of coins minted by Athens and other city-states. The author is a noted numismatist and formerly the assistant keeper of coins and medals in the British Museum.
Waterford, Robin. Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Waterford, a translator of Xenophon’s Anabasis, covered much of the route of the Ten Thousand in a Land Rover Discovery and actually succeeded in identifying a cairn that may be the monument raised by the Greek mercenaries when they first caught site of the Black Sea. He summarizes Xenophon’s account and adds many historical and speculative reflections of his own.
Welsh, Frank. Building the Trireme. London: Constable and Company, Ltd., 1988. This account of the design, construction, and sea trials of the ship Olympias was written by a member of the Trireme Trust and provides an engaging personal diary of the project.
Wood, Michael. In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. A popular account of the author’s own trek along Alexander’s route, with all the benefits to be derived from an eyewitness description of the terrain. Particularly valuable for tracing the surviving local traditions about the larger-than-life Alexander in art, drama, and song.
Xenophon. A History of My Times. Rex Warner, trans. New York: Penguin, 1978. A classic translation (with a provocative introduction) of Xenophon’s attempt to conclude Thucydides’s history—an attempt that grew into an idiosyncratic chronicle of the entire half-century that followed the end of the Peloponnesian War.
———. The Persian Expedition. Rex Warner, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. The translation of the Anabasis of Xenophon, the account of the adventures of the Ten Thousand; contains an introduction and notes by George Cawkwell.
