New Books in Ancient History

Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today (Princeton University Press, 2020) draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer--democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to anc...

In 1923, archaeologist Leonard Woolley stumbled upon a room that dated back to 530BC, the time of the Babylonians. Oddly, the room was filled with artifacts that were thousands of years older. A clay drum led Woolley to speculate that he might have stumbled across the world’s first museum. Whether that was really the case is still somewhat unknown. But this room is the inspiration behind Moudhy Al...

This book rediscovers a lost history of the Roman Empire, written by Sextus Aurelius Victor (ca. 320-390) and demonstrates for the first time both the contemporary and lasting influence of his historical work. Though little regarded today, Victor is the best-attested historian of the later Roman Empire, read by Jerome and Ammianus, honoured with a statue by the pagan Emperor Julian and appointed t...

In this episode, Raj Balkaran speaks with Karen Pechilis, Jarrod Whitaker, and Valerie Stoker about A Cultural History of Hinduism (Bloomsbury, 2024), a landmark six-volume series that traces Hindu traditions from the ancient world to the present. Each volume is organized around eight core themes—Sources of Authority; Body and Mind; Social Organization; Identity and Difference; Politics and Power;...

The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy: Platonis Aemulus and the Invention of Cicero (Lexington Books, 2016) argues that Cicero deserves to be spoken of with more respect and to be studied with greater care. Using Plato's influence on Cicero's life and writings as a clue, Altman reveals the ineffable combination of qualities that enabled Cicero not only to revive Platonism, but also...

Gender Violence in Late Antiquity confronts the violent ideological frameworks underpinning the early Christian imagination, arguing that gender-based violence is not peripheral but is fundamental to understanding early Christian history. By analyzing hagiographical and doctrinal writings, Jennifer Barry reveals how male authors used portrayals of feminized suffering to shape ideals of sanctity an...

Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occupied the highlands of present-day Turkey, Armenia, and Iran in the early first millennium BCE. Lesser known than its rival, the Neo-Assyrian empire, Urartu presents a unique case of imperial power distributed among mountain fort...

In Scotland’s Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy delves into the rich tapestry of pre-Christian Scottish beliefs, uncovering the enduring presence of ancient mythologies in today’s landscape. Long before the arrival of Christian monks, the Scots revered a pantheon of deities, with the Cailleach Goddess at its heart. McHardy skillfully weaves together ancient...

When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his bleak and barbarous new surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of his world was where civilization ceased to exist. Our own fascination with the Greek and Roman world has for centuries followed this perspective, shrouding cultures at the far reaches of their influence in myth. B...

In 388 BCE, Plato, at the age of about forty and in the midst of writing The Republic, visited for the first time the then-Greek city state of Syracuse, on the eastern shores of Sicily. Syracuse was ruled by a tyrant, Dionysius, who on death was followed by his son, also a tyrant. Over the course of his three separate visits to Syracuse over the years, encountering both father and son, Plato arriv...

Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) by Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occupied the highlands of present-day Turkey, Armenia, and Iran in the early first millennium BCE. Lesser known than its rival, the Neo-Assyrian empire, Urartu presents a unique case of imperial power di...

The study of ancient Greece has been central to Western conceptions of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present (Harvard UP, 2024) traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which successive generations have reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary worlds. Thus, in the...

Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (open access) examines spaces, practices, and ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from 300 BCE to 600 CE. Analyzing a wide range of sources—including legal texts, archaeological findings, documentary evidence, and visual materials—Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney argue that prisons were integral to the social, political, and econ...

The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words mysteriously uttered through his prophets, and in the New Testament in the body of Christ. The portrayal of God as corporeal and masculine is seen as merely metaphorical, figurative, or poetic. But, in this revelatory study, Dr. Francesca Stavrakopo...

It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity’s pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundatio...

Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age (Reaktion, 2025) is an evocative history of the ways the old have thought, felt and expressed themselves over two millennia, tracking the experience of ageing through artistic, literary and historical records. While old age is often depicted as ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’, Dr. Barbara H. Rosenwein shows that the elderly have alw...

Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2025) by Barry Strauss recounts the history and events of three major uprisings: the Great Revolt of 66–70 CE, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, culminating in the Siege of Masada, where defenders chose mass suicide over surrender; the Diaspora Revolt, ignited by heavy taxes ac...

Sanskritist and seasoned teacher Dr. Antonia Ruppel shares her views on the merits and pitfalls of academic enterprise, the brave new world of self-employed scholarship and the teaching of ancient languages.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region. How do you tell the story of India–not just the modern-day country, but the whole region of South Asia, home to over two billion people? Historian Audrey Truschke’s newest book, India: 5,000 Years o...

Tatiana Bur, Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge UP, 2025) This open-access book investigates the ways that technological, and especially mechanical, strategies were integrated into ancient Greek religion. By analysing a range of evidence, from the tragic use of the deus ex machina to Hellenistic epigrams to ancient mechanical literature, it expands the existing voc...

Julius Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but an unusually successful republican leader who was measured against the Republic's traditions and its greatest heroes of the past. Catastrophe befell Rome not because Caesar (or anyone else) turned against the Republic, its norms, and institutions, but because Caesar's extraordinary success mobilized a determined oppo...

No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance. Over time, horses came to power...

Contemporary, commonly-accepted understandings of the history of Chinese state formation see the nomadic pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe as peripheral appendages to a centralized, agriculturalist empire. In his work, Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene argues against what he calls “the Sinocentric paradigm” in favor of an interpretation of nomadic pastoralism as the origin of the premodern state. In this i...

Invisible Fire by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single cognitive field manifesting through subject-object perception. Drawing from Vedic roots and cognitive linguistics, Jurewicz argues that creation, bondage, and liberation are all epistemic processes. Misrecognition leads to suffering; liberation ar...

Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton University Press, 2025) shows how the concept of “classicism” lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic value of Black life and asks whether a different kind of classicism—one of insurgence, fugitivity, and emancipation—is possible. Engaging with the work of Sylvia Wynter and other trailblazers in Black studies while drawing on his own experiences as a Blac...