Fans pick 100 books like Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves

Hypatia was a pagan philosopher in Alexandria around AD 400.

As Maria Dzielska shows, she occupies a special place in western culture – her life, and more particularly her death in AD 415 at the hands of a Christian mob, became a metaphor for a clash of civilizations. In these terms, it signifies the death of the old Hellenic world of ideas and learning and the rise of a new Christian world based on faith.

Dzielska’s pithy book explores Hypatia the myth, as created in literature such as Charles Kingsley’s 1853 novel Hypatia or the New Foes with an Old Face, and presents and interprets the historical evidence for the real Hypatia. It’s a great read about a fascinating life. (Also watch the excellent 2009 film Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar!)

This is one of the best books on life in the ancient Roman world – about life for the 99% rather than kings, queens and aristocrats.

In it, Robert Knapp seeks to rescue the invisible majority of ‘ordinary people’, their activities, beliefs, and dreams, from relative obscurity. The book draws on a huge range of sources and every page reveals something interesting. Women form a large proportion of the Roman invisible, and Knapp explores the lives of all kinds of subaltern women, free and enslaved.

Sometimes, as with prostitutes or the poor, the stories are grim – but they are as valid as any discussion of a Cleopatra or a Livia. I really liked Knapp’s idea of historians making invisible people visible again and it really chimed with my work on ancient women.

I came across this book in the early days of writing my own – and it was inspirational.

It’s massive, with 74 chapters, but taken individually these are not in themselves long or difficult reads. We find women of all stations from prostitutes to queens, wet nurses to dancers, and female gladiators introduced, and range in time from the Bronze Age to the Romans.

The authors draw inclusively on multiple approaches and types of evidence, bodies, material culture, iconography, texts, and more. Apart from the vast coverage, the philosophy of the volume as set out by the editors was compelling: to look at ‘real women’ themselves, not mythical women or goddesses, and to emphasize their bodies and names.

It’s a treasure trove for anyone interested in women in the ancient world.

Most of us have heard of Alexander the Great, but his mother Olympias (famous for sleeping with snakes) also had a tumultuous and fascinating life.

Undoubtedly, she was a force to be reckoned with and a significant influence on her son, and this comes through in Elizabeth Carney’s book. Carney looks at Olympias from several angles – her origins as a Molossian royal, as the wife of Philip II of Macedon, as mother of Alexander, and in her own right after Alexander’s death.

At that time, her world became even more dangerous as she vied for power and position; she even led an army to assert her status in the new world – ultimately unsuccessfully. Carney also looks at Olympias’ religious life and her mixed legacy in antiquity (including the snake story).

Robin Lane Fox, best known for his books on Alexander the Great, has produced a superb overview of ancient history, from the emergence of Greece c.776BC to the Roman empire’s zenith under the emperor Hadrian (reigned  AD117-138).  He takes a firmly narrative approach, which makes for a thrilling read. His focus is on the lives of great men such as Pericles, Alexander, and Julius Caesar and on key political and military events rather than on cultural and social factors. While his epic approach may not impress all academics, it will probably still be read with enthusiasm long after more specialist works have been forgotten. Lots of illustrations, some in colour. Ideal for the general reader.

The late Amanda Claridge, a professor at the University of London, introduces us to the ancient city in the book she co-authored: Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, now on offer as Rome, An archaeological guide. Over time, archaeology itself changes, and today's critics say that her presentation of up-to-date archaeology in Rome equally entrances both tourists and her fellow scholars. She taught at both Oxford and the University of London, as well as at Princeton University in the U.S. 

Contemporary historians usually have a vast amount of material at their disposal and institutional support (libraries, archives, universities) that makes accessing and evaluating this material relatively straightforward. Not so in antiquity. The challenges then were enormous.

I think there is no better introduction to the challenges faced by writers of history in the ancient world than Luke Pitcher’s book. He writes in a lively and accessible style, with lots of examples from the ancient historians themselves but also with many contemporary examples. I like that he encourages the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about various matters.

Rather than lecture, he encourages those interested in ancient historians to become part of a conversation that has been going on since antiquity.

The third century is the least known era of imperial Rome, but it’s also the hinge between a world that still had distant roots in the city-state that Rome was under the republic, and the world empire it had become. So many changes took place in the hundred or so years between Septimius Severus (r. 193-212) and Constantine (r. 306-337) that it’s impossible to understand later European, North African, and Middle Eastern history without considering them. Peter Brown was one of the first people to recognize that to understand the late Roman empire and early medieval Europe all the way up to Mohammad and Charlemagne, you had to understand the third century. This book inspired a generation of scholars to broaden their horizons to understand the Roman empire in all its colorful diversity.

Perhaps the best place to start for a novice looking to learn about Roman history. I have had students, friends, and family all tell me that this was the book that really got them excited about ancient Rome.

Beard is a very witty, engaging writer who is able to combine major historical moments with obscure but revealing anecdotes to tell a coherent narrative of Roman history. She also demonstrates, such as in her introductory chapter’s discussion of modern references to the ancient conflict between Cicero and Catiline, the continuing relevance of Roman history to our understanding of politics today.

This book is a treasure-trove of wise and gorgeous sentences—like, “Knowledge of Rome must be physical, sweated into the system, worked up into the brain through the thinning shoe-leather. Substantiality comes through touch and smell, and taste, the tastes of different dusts.”

Like the Eternal City, A Time in Rome by the Irish-British novelist Elizabeth Bowen doesn’t fit into tidy categories.

Is it a guidebook to the city? Is it a memoir? Is it a history of Rome? Yes and no.

Though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, I love it. It’s a perfect book for reveries over a mid-morning caffé.