(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best ancient civilizations history books

If you only read one book on the subject it should be Robert Grant's Augustus to Constantine. It's a tremendous piece of scholarship, in-depth without being overwhelming or boring, and Grant does an excellent job of situating the rise of Christianity against the background of the larger Roman Empire.

Other suggestions:
Henry Chadwick's The Early Church is a classic survey, but it's a bit dated now. Still a very accessible introduction, cheaper and shorter than the Grant.

Peter Brown is, in my opinion, one of the greatest historians who's ever lived and he has written extensively on Late Antique Christianity. For this specific topic, I'd suggest The World of Late Antiquity or The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity. The advantage of Brown is that he's also a fantastic writer.

Another interesting source is Robert Louis Wilken's *Christians as the Romans Saw Them. While it won't give you a full survey of Christianity's rise, it provides the perspective of pagan thinkers reacting to the strange, barbarous, troubling religion that is Christianity. This one is more of a supplement to the other listed works, but I think it helps really understand Christianity against the religio-cultural background of the Roman Empire.

Finally, the great primary source on the subject is Eusebius's *History of the Church. Obviously Eusebius, the 4th century bishop, doesn't match up to modern standards of historical accuracy, but you still get a comprehensive picture of the rise of Christianity that's pretty darn fun to read. Read with a critical eye, it's a terrific source. Also, it's available for free online. (also Eusebius basically invented documentary history, so that's kinda neat)

If you want more recommendations, or want more specific suggestions, I'd be glad to help out. My strongest recommendation are the Grant and the Brown.

Mesopotamian mythology (including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians) is actually one of the better documented mythologies of the ancient world. Despite the preponderance of "ancient alien" nonsense out there, a plethora of scholarly books exist on the subject, as well as websites curated by academic groups.

• ORACC
  
  ORACC is an excellent place to start if you're interested in the major deities of Mesopotamia. Each entry contains historical information (cult centers, earliest attestation, etymology, etc), and well as mythology (genealogical, function in pantheon, etc). The entries are sourced, so you can follow up any queries you may have.
  
  
• ETCSL
  
  The ETCSL is a collection of Mesopotamian mythology in easy-to-digest format. Most of the material on here was written during the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800 BCE) but is based on earlier traditions found in the Akkadian and Ur-III periods (c. 2300-2000 BCE). A print-version of many of the myths contained on the webpage can be found on Amazon here.
  
  
• SEAL
  
  SEAL operates much the same as the ETCSL, only it is focused exclusively on literature from the Akkadian empire (c. 2350 BCE). If you follow the "corpus" link you'll be taken to the entire collection of texts SEAL has available for browsing.
  
  There are other such collections, similar to ETCSL and SEAL that are available online, but these are good starting points if you don't yet have your feet wet regarding the subject matter. You should also, if you're interested, explore print-material as well. Much of Mesopotamia's core research is published in book format, by professors and archaeologists who're still working on dig-sites or in universities.
  
  A few names and texts to consider:
  
  
• History Begins at Sumer
  
• The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character
  
  Samuel Noah Kramer, who published the above, provides an excellent introduction to Sumerian culture and mythology. His books are easily readable and often times serve as most people's introductions to Mesopotamia.
  
  
• Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia
  
  Jean Bottéro's masterwork has been translated, but is approachable and easy to read. This volume explores the emotional and psychological connection of the Mesopotamian people to their religion.
  
  
• The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion
  
• The Harps That Once: Sumerian Poetry in Translation
  
  Thorkild Jacobsen is one of the best translators of Mesopotamian material. These two books present dozens of myths, cult songs, and other works for the reader, while also exploring the patterns and motifs present in Mesopotamian religion across its 3000+ year history.
  
  There are other works I could recommend, but I don't want to overwhelm you with options. If you're interested, I also run the subreddit /r/Sumer, which is dedicated to reconstructing the religious beliefs and practices of the Mesopotamian people. It isn't the most active of places, but I'm still trying to get it off the ground. Feel free to join us over there if you wish.

Best political histories are the Cambridge History of China series. Pretty expensive books, but it's got the best information available in English.

If you're just starting out, check out the wikipedia pages on the various dynasties. That's a good starting point to get you acclimated.

For religious study, try starting with Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China by Arthur Waley. Also check out Sources of Chinese Tradition.

I don't recommend starting with old transmitted texts as Psyqlone suggests because you won't understand the context in which these works were written. Good "survey" books are the best way to start out, then go deeper from there.

Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants is a great book about the Silk Road and its effect on Central and East Asia. It's an English translation of a French book and it's fantastic.

The Golden Peaches of Samarkand is my favorite. It talks about the various goods imported into China during the Tang dynasty. Specialized book, but just throwing it out there. Is there any particular aspect of Chinese or other Asian culture you are interested in?

As far as a good overview book cover it all, I don't have a lot to recommend to you. In college I had to read A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. At the time, I didn't really read much of it, but I definitely don't remember being blown away by it. The reviews aren't great. On the other hand, you can get it used for only a penny.

So it depends on what exactly you are looking for. I remember when I was first looking into Seneca, I was very confused about what works were which, and what was contained in various books.

Seneca's works are generally split into the following categories:

• Letters/Epistles to Lucilius (Roughly 124 philosophical letter he wrote to a friend, meant to be published)
  
• Consolation Letters (Philosophical consolation letters he wrote to friends and family members)
  
• Moral Essays (Various philosophical essays, On the Shortness of Life, On Anger, On the Happy Life, etc...)
  
• Natural Questions (Seneca commenting on the natural sciences of his day―rivers and earthquakes, wind and snow, meteors and comets, etc..)
  
• Tragedies (Seneca re-wrote a bunch of classic tragedies from antiquity with his own twist)
  
  Most people will be more interested in the top three items from that list.
  
  The Penguin classics "Letters from a Stoic" gives you a small, hand picked selection of the Letters to Lucilius (maybe about 25% of the 124 Letters?). If you just want to get your feet wet to see if you like Seneca at all, then this is a decent place to start. I own it, the translation is ok, this was my first book on Seneca. My biggest issue with it is that, the table of contents for which specific letters are included is non-existent, so if you want to look up a letter, you have to scour through the book, hoping you find it, and all of the letters in that book are labeled with Roman Numerals, which I am pretty bad at remembering as soon as you go past the number 10, your mileage may vary with this one.
  
  The "Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters." looks like a good mix of Letters to Lucilius, Consolation Letters, and Moral Essays, but I don't own it, so can't say much about it beyond that.
  
  Oxford's University Press version of "Dialogues and Essays" looks like it has a nice mix of Consolation Letters and Moral Essays, and even an excerpt from Natural Questions, but no Letters to Lucilius, I don't own this one either.
  
  If you were only ever going to get two books, I would highly recommend Letters on Ethics by Chicago Press, which includes and excellent translation of all 124 Letters to Lucilius along with Hardship and Happiness which includes his best (in my opinion) mix of Moral Essays and Consolation Letters. They are relatively expensive, but worth it in the long run if you are serious about diving into Seneca.
  
  At one point I had the Loeb Editions of pretty much all his works, but since I can't read Latin at all, I didn't see them as too helpful, the translations were decent.
  
  So yeah, really it depends, hopefully some of that info was helpful to you.

Šulmu, /u/KlingonLinux! I gotchoo on "Canaanite" and Israelite (they were more or less the "same" people religio-culturally for most of Antiquity, and definitely genetically/ethnically) and Punic/Phoenician (Iron Age Levantine ["Canaanite" and Israelite peoples and so on] peoples abroad throughout the Mediterranean as far West as Southern Spain/the island of Ibiza and North Africa) sources, awīlu.

Some necessary clarification : I routinely put "Canaanite" in scare-quotes, because there was no definitive, proto-national much less national identity for so-called "Canaanites" in the way that Israelites and Judahites eventually had by the 1st millennium BCE, and the people of Syro-Palestine during the Middle to Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age would overwhelmingly identify and operate by clan, by tribe, or by city-state before calling themselves and operating as Knaʿni (Ugaritic, meaning "people of Canaan"). "Canaanite" religious forms consonantly varied quite noticeably by city-state, in ways that, say, Egyptian ones did not, even taking into account "alternative" (but not competing) Egyptian local theologies and so on. Speaking in perhaps excessively general terms, there was a State religion overarching the regional ones in Egypt which, in effect, bound them together as a cooperative dynamic unit. "Canaan" as such had no such large-scale, cohesive "religious infrastructure" of Egypt's much less Mesopotamian Kingdoms' and Empires' like, and it didn't "help" that the exceptionally powerful Egyptian Empire of the Late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Periods and contemporaneous Mesopotamian and Hittite Empires were constantly vying for control of the North Sinai and Syro-Palestine. The economic centers of "Canaan" were, indeed, frequently subservient to Egypt throughout Bronze Age history, with Egyptian Kings investing governors and mayors of its own throughout "Canaanite" territories following the Thutmosid Conquest, much to the personal danger of said governors and mayors (who were neither particularly liked nor trusted by their Levantine subjects nor by Egyptian officials) and much to the cantankerous chagrin of the Levantine peoples living under Egyptian Imperial rule. Which is to say nothing of Egyptian-mandated relocations of restive Levantine people and so forth.

Furthermore, Hebrew Biblical literature intensely confuses what "Canaanite" even means in a religio-cultural sense, using the term simply to inveigh against religious beliefs and conventions, regardless of actual origin, Deuteronomic Jews did not wish to see carry over from their ancestral religion(s)/culture(s) and from neighboring religions/cultures (e.g., Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions/cultures. See Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 7, and Ezekiel 23 as but three illustrations of the aforementioned) into newly-minted Judaism and what had then become the Israelite-Judahite "national" identities (primarily in politically-motivated defiance, it should be noted, of their later Master, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had made of the internally-fractured Kingdoms of Israel and Judah satellite states through rigorous opportunistic military conquest and serious economic and political strong-arming, beginning with the great and cunning King Tukultī-apil-Ešarra/"Tiglath-Pileser" III). A few scholars and especially many would-be Revivalists not academically-trained frequently, unwittingly hang their understanding of "Canaanite" upon all this confusion -- and the latter not in anything like a Jewish context nor through a Jewish hermeneutic, either, while still treating iffy Jewish accounts embedded in Scripture entirely too literally, which makes it an even more weird and defunct confusion.

Now, it's very important to form a baseline understanding of the historical circumstances of the Near East concerning "Canaan," what came out of it, its influential neighbors, and religio-cultural receptors. I know it feels like unnecessary drudgery to many people, but the religious tidbits don't make much sense and their use in/continued relevance to Modernity can't be adequately evaluated without learning and understanding their historical contexts, which is where a lot of would-be Revivalists go very wrong, in my opinion -- especially since "Canaanite" and other non-Kemetic ANE religious Revivals are still very much in their formative stages and aren't being led by people with necessary, thorough backgrounds in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. For this, I recommend beginning with Donald B. Redford's Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Marc Van De Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000 to 323 BC, Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, and Mark Woolmer's Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction. They're not short texts, apart from Woolmer's that is, but they will give you a decent, fairly comprehensive understanding of the circumstances of the ANE.

Concerning "Canaanite" and Israelite, etc., religious details and developments, just about anything by Mark S. Smith, Rainer Albertz (namely, this massive text he co-authored with Rüdiger Schmitt), Daniel E. Fleming, and Dennis Pardee are quite sound.

Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd Edition edited by Mark S. Smith and Michael D. Coogan is probably where you're looking to start vis-a-vis "Canaanite" religion(s), as most people like to get at the mythic material first and foremost. After that, I would definitely recommend picking up The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series), along with Pardee's Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World) and Nicolas Wyatt's Religious Texts from Ugarit -- there should be a free PDF of the latter still floating around the nets somewhere.

While William Foxwell Albright has since become outdated in areas, his works are nevertheless necessary, now "classic" reads. Of particular use and importance is his Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths

Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan by John Day and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Second Edition are handy, but relatively scarce and expensive.

Tryggve N. D. Mettinger is a much-beloved scholar of mine, though be aware that in The Riddle of the Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East -- one of the very few decent and comprehensive texts in ANE "comparative religious studies" -- wherein he addresses a few major Levantine Gods like Ba'l-Hadad, he unfortunately demonstrates a very poor comprehension of Greek, so if you ever pick that title up please do remember to take his interpretations in the chapter concerning the Phoenician God Melqart with a metric ton of salt.

Aaron J. Brody's Each Man Cried Out to His God: The Specialized Religion of Canaanite and Phoenician Seafarers was a short, widely-accessible, and enjoyable volume; he covers quite a few lesser-known and under-explored elements of Levantine religions therein.

It sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and there's so much more to read and discuss beyond all these, but hopefully this will provide a decent springboard for you into the crazy, wonderful world of Levantine religions.

I hope this helped, and if you need anything else on this, or concerning Mesopotamia and Egypt, feel free to ask anytime.

> It can't be proved either way...

Actually, it can be - at least in the case of the Abrahamic religions and their gods.

You'll notice I used the plural term there - godSSSSSS.

There are actually several gods - deities - incorporated into the bible's forms of worship. You won't learn about this from any Watchtower Society literature, because the Watchtower Society's bible "translations" fail to use the oldest manuscripts and information available nowadays. Plus, it's in their interest to keep average Jehovah's Witnesses from knowing that there are several gods incorporated into a supposedly "one" god, in the bible.

First, "Jehovah" is a mistranslation of the YHWH consonants with the vowels of the title "Elohim".

There are two "names" for the Hebrew god, right there. Although if one traces the origins of the name/term "Elohim" back to its CANAANITE roots, one finds that "Elohim" originally was PLURAL, in the Canaanite language & polytheistic belief system.

From: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Canaanite_Religion

>The Canaanite pantheon was conceived as a divine clan, headed by the supreme god El; the gods collectively made up the elohim.

Then there's the Canaanite patriarchal god "EL" - as in Isra-EL, Beth-EL, Samu-EL, Dani-EL, and so on.

The OLDER Canaanite patriarchal god EL is deeply incorporated into the Israelite/Hebrew culture - and the bible itself.

Also, "EL" and YHWH are NOT the same god...

From: http://contradictionsinthebible.com/are-yahweh-and-el-the-same-god/

>First, the name Israel is not a Yahwistic name. El is the name of the deity invoked in the name Israel, which translates: “May El persevere.”2 This suggests that El was seen as the chief god in the formative years of Israel’s religious practices. In fact, the etiological story explaining the origin of the name Israel occurs in Genesis 35:9-15, where Jacob obtains this name through the blessing of El Shaddai, that is “El of the Mountain.”

>Second, there exist numerous parallels and similarities between descriptions and cultic terminology used for El in the Canaanite texts and those used for Yahweh in the biblical sources (see below). At some point, it is ascertained, the cultic worship of Yahweh must have absorbed that of El, through which means Yahweh assimilated both the imagery and epithets once used of El.

And honey, that's just the tip of the iceberg. You may want to check out these two books which come at this information from two different viewpoints:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-History-God-Biblical/dp/080283972X

http://www.amazon.com/Did-God-Have-Wife-Archaeology/dp/0802863949

Which brings me to another part of your comment:

>but I find the argument that someone, an intelligent force, could have created this magnificent world we live in.

Maybe, but it certainly wasn't the all-of-3,000-years-old bible god YHWH.

The very oldest bits of bible verse ever found are barely 3,000 years old.

From: http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/01/06/The-Blessing-of-the-Silver-Scrolls.aspx#Article

>Excavations in Jerusalem in 1979–80 by Gabriel Barkay turned up two amulets dating from the late seventh century BC.1 They were found in the fourth of several burial caves he discovered on an escarpment known as Ketef Hinnom, which overlooks the Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) just opposite Mt. Zion. Each amulet contained a rolled-up sheet of silver which, when unrolled, revealed the Priestly Benediction inscribed on them. The exact Hebrew words (translated into English) are:

>May Yahweh bless you and keep you;
May Yahweh cause his face to
Shine upon you and grant you
Peace (Coogan 1995: 45).

>Commented the late archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon:

>"This is now the earliest occurrence of a Biblical text in an extra-Biblical document, significantly predating the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is also the oldest extra-Biblical reference to YHWH, the God of Israel (1987: 124; cf. King and Stager 2001: 306).

Notice that they are celebrating the fact that these bits of scripture date back to slightly AFTER 700 BC...

But there are many, many gods/goddesses/beliefs that are FAR older than the godSSS of the bible.

The Egyptian gods & goddesses are at least 1,000 years OLDER than the oldest Hebrew god[s].

From: http://www.theology101.org/egy/pyt/index.htm

>The Pyramid Texts were funerary inscriptions that were written on the walls of the early Ancient Egyptian pyramids at Sakkara. These date back to the fifth and sixth dynasties, approximately the years 2350-2175 B.C.E. However, because of extensive internal evidence, it is believed that they were composed much earlier, circa 3000 B.C.E. The Pyramid Texts are, therefore, essentially the oldest sacred texts known.

The goddess of the temples of Malta are at least 3,300 years OLDER than the oldest Hebrew god[s]. From: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/132

>The Megalithic Temples of Malta (Ġgantija, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Skorba, Ta’ Ħaġrat and Tarxien) are prehistoric monumental buildings constructed during the 4th millennium BC and the 3rd millennium BC. They rank amongst the earliest free-standing stone buildings in the world and are remarkable for their diversity of form and decoration.

The deities of the temples at Gobekle Tepe are at least 7,000 years OLDER than the oldest Hebrew god[s]. From: http://gobeklitepe.info/

>Welcome to the presentation of the The World’s First Temple, Gobeklitepe … a pre-historic site, about 15 km away from the city of Sanliurfa, Southeastern Turkiye. What makes Gobeklitepe unique in its class is the date it was built, which is roughly twelve thousand years ago, circa 10,000 BC.

The deities of the artists who made the cave paintings in southern France & Spain are at least 9,000 to 27,000 years OLDER than the oldest Hebrew god[s]. From: http://www.experienceardeche.com/page/the-chauvet-cave/56

>The Chauvet cave is situated next to the famous Pont d'Arc, above the old river bed upon which the Ardèche flowed before the archway opened up and changed its course. It contains a vast array (more than 1000) and unique collection of cave paintings dated between 32,000 - 36,000 years old which makes them some of the oldest cave paintings in the world.

The deities or forms of worship (likely animism, at first) of the aboriginal Australians are at least 36,000 to 73,000 years OLDER than the oldest Hebrew god[s] - depending on which date one chooses for the migration of the archaic Indian or southern Asian populations into Australia. From: http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/introduction.shtml

>Australia's Aboriginal culture probably represents the oldest surviving culture in the world, with the use of stone tool technology and painting with red ochre pigment dating back over 60,000 years.

Are you beginning to get the picture? Beginning to see how puny & of what recent origin the bible's godSSSS are? But wait, we have one more stop to make on the timeline of human (but not Homo sapien) religions...

Finally, going back to the Acheulean cultures of the Homo erectus, the Berekhat Ram female figurine (possibly a poppet - a small deity figure kept as a charm to ward off evil) dates back at least 230,000 years & may be as old as 700,000 years. From: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/venus-of-berekhat-ram.htm

>The early Stone Age figurine of Berekhat Ram (Birkat Ram), discovered in hills north of Israel, is believed to be one of the oldest pieces of prehistoric sculpture known to archeology. Although initially highly controversial - as some paleontologists preferred to see it more as a product of natural erosion rather than a deliberate human act of creativity - its status now seems more secure following the discovery of a second similar and contemporaneous figurine - the Venus of Tan-Tan, in Morocco.... [bold & italics mine]

>The Venus of Berekhat Ram was created during the Acheulean culture of the Lower Paleolithic period of the old Stone Age, and has been dated to 230,000-700,000 BCE. The reason for the vagueness of its provenance is that it was found sandwiched between two layers of volcanic residue: an upper one dated about 230,000 BCE, and a lower one dated 700,000 BCE. This makes it (along with the effigy of Tan-Tan) the oldest example of mobiliary art ever recorded, and remarkably, it means that it predated Neanderthal man, and was created by an earlier hominid like Homo erectus.

So, the claim that the recently-generated Abrahamic "gods" could have had ANYTHING to do with the origins of the 4.5 billion year old earth & slightly older solar system (let alone the 12.8 billion year old universe) is laughable in the extreme.

[edit to fix stuff!]

I like the trial and death of Socrates.

It may not be the best place to start in the whole world of philosophy, but it is the best I know of. The Euthyphro dialog is particularly fun and accessible as far as primary sources go.

People will tell you to stick to/stay away from primary sources at first. Don't listen to either party. Read what you are interested in. Reading what you are interested will kindle your love of philosophy and improve your philosophy reading skills.

That said, Kant is not a good place to start. You now know one place that is not a good place to start. Best of luck.

>no one has offered anything new since I asked

You seem to have missed the many explanations from various members here about archelogical and historical absence of proof of yogic practices within Druidry, you missed the book recommendations to help you understand more of Druid history, and in fact it seems you've only taken interest in the posts that cater well to your own responses rather than information.

Here, let me help.

The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids is one of the most populous Druid orders around. They're most famous for their 3-grade correspondence course. They hold international festivals and host a very entertaining, informative podcast, Druidcast. Their website will answer a lot of your questions on Druidry.

Ár nDraíocht Féin is another very popular Druid order.

Ancient Order of Druids in America is another one.

Blood and Mistletoe by Ronald Hutton is an amazing book detailing the history of Druids.

The Druidry Handbook by John Michael Greer is highly praised.

The Druid Ways by Philip Carr-Gomm is a great, short introduction to modern Druidry.

Celtic mythology is prevalent in Druidic practices.

This should mostly be new information to you, since you came here asking to learn about Druidry. Please, browse through a couple of the sites and come back with any questions. I'll be happy to help you sort through some of the admittedly jumbled info and answer any honest question.

Since it looks like you're interested in some general overviews, I'm going to recommend books that give just that. If you're looking for books that go more in depth on Roman topics, I'm more than happy to supply some.

For a brief introduction to Italian history in general, I would recommend Valerio Lintner's
[A Travelers History of Italy]
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/1566565219/R1B2MURVDQWPAT/ref=mw_dp_cr?cursor=2&qid=1407607391&sort=rd&sr=8-1). This offers a great overview of Italian history for someone with little exposure to the topic. It will show you plenty of topics you might want to investigate further.

As general overviews of Roman history (survey-level books that provide a contexualized narrative of Roman history), I'm going to recommend two books. [The Romans: From Village to Empire: A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199730571/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1407608174&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40), by Mary Boatwright and others, and [Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0521711495/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1407608616&sr=8-1), by Christopher Mackay.
Boatwright's book provides an excellent in-depth overview of the general trends of Roman history, from the origins of the city of Rome itself until Late Antiquity. Though focusing on the political development of the Roman state, there are decent introductions to social and cultural history of the Empire. As the title implies, Mackay's work presents a survey-level overview of the political and military history of Rome, with emphasis placed on the Republic and Principate.

The best introduction to the history and workings of the Roman military is [The Complete Roman Army] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0500288992/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1407609072&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40) by Adrian Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is one of the leading Roman military scholars, and provides an incredibly readable yet detailed overview of the Roman army. Seriously, if you read only one book on the Roman military (but please don't!) read this.

While much more academic than the other books I've recommended, Arthur Eckstein's [Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0520259920/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1407610158&sr=8-1) is the preeminent text on the rise of Rome. Using ideas from the modern Realist school of international relations, Eckstein argues that Rome became preeminent in the Mediterranean not because they were "tougher" than other states, but rather because they more effectively understood and exploited the power dynamics of the Mediterranean world. This is probably not the easiest book for someone just being introduced to Roman history, but if you can get through it it'll be worth it.

Since you mention Venice, I have a book in mind that might be useful, but I'm blanking on the title. I'll get back to you if I can find it ( I'm on mobile right now). I hope you find these titles useful, and if you need any other recommendations please let me know!

In all likelihood, Greek and Hindu religious belief systems are similar not because of trade contacts, but because they are actually directly related, sisters descended from a prehistoric Indo-European religion or religious continuum. You can find further correspondences with Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Lithuanian, Slavic, and Hittite religions, all of which are also part of the Indo-European diaspora beginning roughly 6000 years ago and continuing in waves for another 3000-4000 years.

There are no direct attestations of these prehistoric Indo-European religious beliefs themselves, but like the proto-language, they have been reconstructed using comparative historical and linguistic methods. The basic framework will seem familiar: a chief daytime sky god (Indra, Zeus, Jupiter, Dei Patrous, and a few theologically demoted gods such as Tyr) whose daughter is the goddess of the dawn (Usas, Eos, Aurora, Eostre, Aušrinė). A pair of divine twins, usually the children of the daytime sky god (the Ashvins/Ashvieniai, Kastor/Castor and Polydeukes/Pollux, Hengis and Horsa, a possible Celtic cognate in Brân and Manawydan). Another pair of brothers involved in the creation of the universe or the foundation of the believing community (Manu and Yama, Mannus and Ymir, possibly also Romulus and Remus). A storm god (Perkunas, Perun, possibly Parjanya and Thor), a water god (Apam Napat, Neptunus, Nechtain) and a nature god (Pushan, Pan). A serpent (Vritra, Kaliya, Illuyanka, the Lernaean Hydra, Python, Jormungandr, Fafnir, Beowulf's dragon) slain, often by the thunder god.

Many, many other correspondences are disputed, debated or less certain due to insufficient evidence, and none of this is meant to discount other myths and beliefs that do arise out of cultural contact, but on the balance there's a wealth of evidence supporting a common origin for all of these Indo-European mythological/religious belief systems.

• Mallory/Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, 2006.
  
• West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 2009.

Since we've been waiting for nearly a day for answers in this thread (which is about some of my favorite topics to study), I'm going to list some factors I've read about. I know the mods are strict here, but I'll cite sources for every one of these factors, which I hope will count for something.

• Mesopotamia was much more geographically diverse. When we talk about "ancient Egypt," in terms of geography, we're really just talking about that narrow strip of arable land on the banks of the Nile. The vast majority of Egypt's population seem to have made their living by farming and fishing along that narrow strip, from prehistoric times all the way to the Roman period (and, to some extent, even into the present day). All along that strip of land, yearly floods and other seasonal factors exhibited similar patterns, making it relatively easy to plan harvests, centralize stockpiles and organize distributions of food and other resources all along the Nile. In fact, even nearby cultures - like the Kerma Culture and the Kingdom of Kush - which were genetically, linguistically and (to some extent) religiously distinct from Egypt, also made their livings from the Nile, which may be one reason why Egypt was able to conquer and control these kingdoms at various points in its history. Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was a forested plain bordered by swamps in the south, mountains to the north and east, and deserts to the west. From prehistoric times onward, this geographic diversity seems to have brought people with widely divergent cultures, beliefs and ways of life into conflict over the same pieces of land, where much of the agriculture was achieved by damming and building aqueducts from certain points on the Tigris and Euphrates. While one city reaped a bountiful harvest, a city just up the river might be starving - because when one city enjoyed a plentiful water supply, it was probably at the expense of a city downriver. In fact, the first recorded war in history was fought between the city-states of Lagash and Umma, over just such a water supply.
  
  
• Egypt was unified much earlier. While there's some evidence that Egyptian cities each worshiped their own gods during the prehistoric and proto-historic periods, many processes of linguistic and cultural unification seem to have taken place much earlier than in Mesopotamia - probably sometime between 6,000 and 3,000 BCE. In other words, Egypt most likely did go through an extensive period of immigration, city-state rules, warfare and unification - we just know very little about this process because most of it occurred before the invention of writing. All the large-scale cross-cultural migrations and wars were most likely wrapped up by the time of the pharaoh Menes (possibly the same person as Narmer) around 3,000 BCE. Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was still receiving massive immigrations of foreign peoples as late as the 500s BCE, and even later. This region was arguably truly unified for the first time under the Neo-Assyrian Empire throughout the 800s BCE, and was brought under more scrupulous (and less harsh) administrative control by the Achaemenid Persian Empire from the 500s to 300s BCE. So in that sense, Mesopotamia and Egypt didn't "start at similar times" - Egypt's processes of immigration and unification began much earlier, and were largely completed by the time Mesopotamian city-states really started waging war - and the new invention of writing was able to document those processes.
  
  
  
• Mesopotamia was more culturally and politically diverse. Because of these ongoing waves of immigration, there was a lot of trade, warfare, and cultural mingling going on from very early periods in Mesopotamia - and each group seems to have held onto certain cultural elements (languages, clothing and grooming styles) well into the historical period. Although groups like the Sumerians and Akkadians lived in the same cities and intermarried, they were each proud of their distinct languages and styles of dress. Meanwhile, other groups like the Elamites (based in what's now Iran, though not an Indo-Iranian people), the Kassites, the Hittites, the Assyrians, and many others, swept in from the geographical fringes at various times, sometimes ruling for a few hundred years; sometimes conquering, falling, and reconquering across thousands of years. Even the famous Babylonian king Hammurabi was the descendant of a foreign Amorite conqueror. While Egypt certainly fought with the peoples on its borders - most notably the Libyans (Libu), the Kushites, the Hittites and the Sea Peoples - and these peoples sometimes conquered and ruled Egypt (the 25th dynasty of Nubian Kushite pharaohs; the 23rd dynasty of Libyan Meshwesh pharaohs, and of course the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty), Egyptian culture seems to have conquered these peoples as much as they conquered Egypt: the invaders seem to have adopted Egyptian fashions and religion, and followed the basic protocols of pharaonic rule. Many of them even seem to have adopted the Egyptian language - except for the Ptolemaic rulers, who (with the exception of Cleopatra) insisted on speaking only Greek at court.
  
  As with many distinctions in history, these aren't cut-and-dried. Egypt actually did exhibit quite a lot of cultural, political and religious variation throughout the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms; large swathes of Mesopotamia were unified under single rulers (Sargon of Akkad, Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi, for example) for a century or two, here and there; and remarkably diverse groups of people (Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites and many others) seem to have lived in relative peace in many Mesopotamian cities.
  
  But the short answer to your question, based on sources I've read, is that the factors above are some of the most commonly cited reasons why Mesopotamia is perceived as more politically unstable than Egypt.
  
  Sources:
  
  
• Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East by Michael Roaf
  
• Ancient Mesopotamia: The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians by Virginia Schomp
  
• The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character by Samuel Noah Kramer
  
• Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
  
• The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest by Seton Lloyd
  
• Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz

Alright, hold onto your seat, there are quite a few haha

Some ecology books, good for your approach to nature itself

• Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth
  
  
• Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
  
  
• Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth: An Introduction to Spiritual Ecology
  
  These are more Druid-centric books
  
  
• The Path of Druidry: Walking the Ancient Green Way
  
  
• Bonewits's Essential Guide to Druidism
  
  
• The Druidry Handbook: Spiritual Practice Rooted in the Living Earth
  
  
• The Solitary Druid: Walking the Path of Wisdom and Spirit
  
  These are more historical and culture books about the ancient Celtics, very good for context. Anything by Ronald Hutton I'm going to suggest, though he does tend to have a very dry, academic style. Reading his stuff is more like reading a text book than anything else. So if you do get any of these, pace yourself. I would still suggest getting and reading one Celtic historical book, it's important to know the history.
  
  
• The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy
  
  
• Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain
  
  
• Pagan Celtic Britain
  
  
• Celtic Heritage
  
  
• Celtic Myth and Religion: A Study of Traditional Belief, with Newly Translated Prayers, Poems and Songs
  
  As you go, you'll figure out what works for you and what doesn't, you might end up mixing in shamanism or witchcraft, even wicca, or buddhism, druidry works with a number of other approaches. Keep an open mind, try things, and don't be afraid to ask questions. Paganism in general can be pretty overwhelming, and Druidry has even fewer guidelines than most. Good luck with your coursework!

I'm going to specifically compare Churchill's notion about Greco-Roman thought to the importance of Chinese classics in East Asia. I'd say it is comparable, but distinct from the Roman/Greek case, especially colored by the very recent history running up to where Churchill was.

In the Chinese case, on-and-off dynasties were run according to the precepts of the "four books and five classics." The four books were a set of texts written (or at least compiled by) Confucius and Mencius. While composed as mostly anecdotes, they established a system of propriety, morality, and "right action" that extended upwards and outwards from the home to the government. The classics were the basis of ancient Chinese religious, poetic, and ritual thought. They established a huge amount of the underlying aesthetic, religious, and cosmological worldviews that you see for millennia. These were seen as seminal to almost all literate Chinese individuals, right up until the reforms and upheavals towards the end of the Qing empire as the 19th century ended.

A specific example of their importance is the "Imperial exam system." Set up in the 600s, it determined participation in government work was based almost exclusively on these texts. Specific forms varied and, as time wore on, some texts and requirements were added or subtracted based on which dynasty was giving the test. The underlying basis, though, was always the four books and five classics.

The thought (and, specifically, the Four Books/Five Classics) was also extremely important to the Imperial forms of government in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (to varying degrees based on place, time, and who in particular was running things).

Chinese Dynastic succession kept up at a reasonably fast pace and established successive, stable empires, with only a century or two of chaos in between--even foreign invaders like the Mongols or Manchu would acquire Han-educated advisors and set up governments based largely on Confucian tenets (Yuan and Qing were both 'foreign' dynasties). The thought of ancient China wasn't seen as something of a bygone age--it was immediate and current, seen as a lineage. As the Qing declined throughout the 19th and early 20th century, however, many saw it as clear to them that the entire worldview was flawed. Western nations, with their own notions of the world, were militarily superior and bullied the Qing Empire (dealing with its own massive internal issues, including a civil war that left more dead than 20 American Civil Wars). As a result, the ancient thought was discredited and a variety of Western ideologies took root. The one that eventually triumphed, Maoist Communism, explicitly sought to utterly destroy Confucian thought in the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese Communist Party has significantly moderated that stance since then, though, and the classics are once again revered. This is at least partially to set up a credible competing nationalist ideology to "the West,"
and one which isn't based on the now also largely discredited (and also, really, Western) Communist thought.

In Europe, you have the fall of Rome in the 400s and largely, there's chaos thereafter (Things are different in the East with the continuation of Byzantium, but Churchill speaks to a specifically Western European mode of thought). There were various Renaissances (many more than most people give credit for, I don't mean to get any Medievalists on me for downplaying the achievements in the period too much)--Charlamagne, the Ottonians, and others. Still, though, none of them succeeded in achieving anything close to the political hegemony of the Romans, much less in physical, engineering terms. Importantly, also, none of them had the control or longevity to be compared to really any of the dynasties that followed the Roman-comparable Han in our contrasting Chinese example. Rather than the living, functional, developing ideology that informed Empire after Empire, Rome was an ancient wonder. It was present--they could see it around them in the roads and aqueducts they used, the Christian religion they practiced, and the cities they lived in--but they couldn't match it. While pretensions to being "successors" to Rome and many aspects of Roman culture had remained, much of the specific text and practice had long passed by the wayside to be rediscovered during the Renaissance.

In the 'Renaissance that stuck' in the 1400s and onwards, they looked on Roman thought and art as something ancient and wonderful. Statues dug up, texts acquired from the Islamic world (where they had been continuing study of Plato/Aristotle for many of the intervening centuries), and other aspects of greco-roman thought created an idealized past of the "ancients" for the "moderns" to compare their world to. Since there was such distance, I would editorialize, it allowed for way more idolization. As the Renaissance and Enlightenment spread, modern nation-states still based a great deal of thought and practice rooted in this source of cultural legitimacy: A perfect empire that existed an untold amount of time ago.

This is where Churchill is coming from; an agent of a modern empire that, still, desperately wanted to cast itself in the mold of the source of ancient legitimacy. Rather than seeing ancient thought as shackles on modernity, it was (mostly rightly) seen as the seed from which the Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, and subsequent ability to dominate most of the globe had sprung.

To sum up the difference: In China, you have a constant lineage of social and political thought that was in operation in an Empire torn to shreds and thus discredited, though later redeemed as a source of cultural/nationalist pride. In the UK, you have a strain of thought, the specifics of which were lost, held in reverence as a golden age before centuries of intermittent warfare and chaos. Its rediscovery sets off, in part, a sequence of events that sets the UK up as a truly global empire--reflecting on the idealized past, the British Empire is lionized as a "new Rome," necessarily owing much to the ideas from the "old Rome." Nothing legitimizes your social and political thought (in your mind, anyway) than literally conquering most of the planet with it.

Edited to add sources of where I formed these views--by no means exhaustive, mainly what I can remember off the top of my head/can pull off a bookshelf:

Chinese history:

• Fairbanks-- http://www.amazon.com/China-History-Second-Enlarged-Edition/dp/0674018281
  
• De Bary-- http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Chinese-Tradition-Vol-1/dp/0231109393
  
• Hsu-- http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Modern-China-Immanuel/dp/0195125045
  
• I also have read through most of Confucius -- Analects and (Mythically Fu Xi, true author debated) -- I Ching at various times
  
  European:
  
  Roman period:
  
  
• Plutarch, Caesar, Livy
  
  Renaissance thought:
  
  
• Arnold-- http://www.amazon.com/Knighthood-1050-1300-University-Academic-Monograph/dp/0198219601/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374248705&sr=1-1&keywords=German+Knighthood+1050-1300 (Used basically as the background text for the 1000-1500 class I took, basis to build around "dark ages")
  
• Machiavelli- Discourses on Livy (while it's more complicated than simple idolization, he definitely looks back on the Romans as a period starkly different and superior to the one he lives in)
  
  Enlightenment-Beyond:
  
  
• Jonathan Swift: Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns (Focus is mainly on literary tradition, but does add the complication that, especially as time wore on, not everyone agreed that Roman thought should be idolized. It highlights this, while also reinforcing the distinction--this was not seen as "Western" or "European" thought that evolved and developed down the ages--there are ancients and there are moderns)
  
• Levine -- http://www.amazon.com/British-Empire-Sunrise-Sunset/dp/0582472814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374249026&sr=1-1&keywords=levine+the+british+empire
  
• Mokyr-- http://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Athena-Historical-Origins-Knowledge/dp/0691120137/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374248779&sr=1-1&keywords=gifts+of+athena
  
  

The standard textbook history right now appears to be The Romans: From Village to Empire.

Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic also still seems to be the standard introduction to that period (i.e. the time period of Imperator).

If you want to read about the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar/Augustus, it's hard to turn down Caesar: Life of a Colossus which is great for the general reader, alongside his Augustus: First Emperor of Rome.

He also writes pretty solid books on other major Roman figures, such as In the Name of Rome: The Men who won the Roman Empire.

If you want to get a pretty good introduction to Roman History, but more of what life was like for the average citizen, SPQR by Mary Beard is actually a good choice.

Older, but still solid, is Peter Garnsey's The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture which covers a lot of things Beard doesn't.

For the Roman army, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army is a solid introduction.

However you'll want to break that down into several books if you want to go deeper:

Roman Military Equipment by MC Bishop and JCN Coulston

The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD by Graham Webster

A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp

For the collapse of the Western Roman Empire I'd recommend both Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians combined with the more scholarly Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West.

For the forgotten half of Roman History, often mistakenly called the "Byzantine Empire," it's hard to cover with just one book, but Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society has become the standard reading. John Haldon's The Empire that would not Die covers the critical transition during the Islamic conquests thoroughly.

Of course I have to include books on the two IMO most overrated battles in Roman history on this list since that's what people love:

The Battle of the Teutoberg Wald: Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch

The Battle of Cannae: Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory is sort of the single book to read if you can only pick one. However, The Ghosts of Cannae is also good. But if you actually want to go really in depth, you need Gregory Daly's dry-as-the-Atacama book Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. When I say dry as the Atacama, I mean it, but it's also extraordinarily detailed.

I'd complement this with Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars.

For other interesting topics:

The Emergence of the Bubonic Plague: Justinian's Flea and Plague and the End of Antiquity.

Hadrian's Wall: Hadrian's Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy

Roman Architecture: Roman Architecture by Frank Sear (definitely a bit more scholarly but you can probably handle it)

I may post more in addendum to this list with further comments but I think I'm reaching the character count.

Ah, finally I meet someone (albeit on Reddit) who's followed Bob Brier on the incredible journey he takes the listener through, in his course. It is hard to believe that it has been nearly 17 years since the course first came out. I have followed Prof. Brier's course religiously over the last 16 years, and through his evocative, imaginative and illustrative language, rediscovered Ancient Egypt over and over again. In fact I find myself consulting my notes on his lectures from time to time. Needless to say, I am a huge fan of Prof. Brier, and visiting Egypt with him (on one of his tours) is on my bucket list.

That said, I too was in the same boat after having finished his course. What next? He did give some pointers in his last lesson on what to follow and where to go to get more information. Nowadays with the advent of Facebook, one can follow these channels their official Facebook pages. But that wasn't your question.

Personally, I found this book to be quite informative, and I would recommend it highly. Toby Wilkinson - Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. It is written in an easy to read format and I found that it filled in many gaps in Prof. Brier's telling of the story of Egypt, especially during the first and second intermediate periods. Coming from Prof. Brier's course, it really felt like the next logical step.

From there, it gets a little more difficult. Recent developments have been slow - owing to the unrest in Egypt. Off-hand, I am not aware of any significant compendium of recent knowledge that has emerged in our field of interest. There are bits and pieces to be found, and I find that the Subreddits do a good job of compiling the same.

That said, if someone does know of more recent books, please do enlighten me. Hope that helps!

The Constitutio Antoniniana which granted Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire was issued in 212 AD and there is quite a lot of Roman history after that. Soon follows the so called “crisis of the 3rd century” between 235 and 284 AD throughout which the empire was shaken by internal as well as external problems. Next comes Late Antiquity, a period which has attracted a lot of scholarly attention in recent decades. It saw some huge changes like Christianity’s rise to dominance or the final partition of the empire into a western and eastern half that you mentioned. And while the western part already disappeared throughout the 5th century the Eastern Roman Empire would survive for a long time further. The rise of the first Islamic caliphate in the 7th century AD cost it much of its territory and caused further transformations. This surviving remnant of the Roman Empire, now centred around Constantinople, is usually called the Byzantine Empire. Its eventful history would continue through the entire Middle Ages until 1453 AD when it was finally conquered by the Ottomans. So all in all there is more than a millennium of further Roman history to cover.

• Michael Kulikowski, The Triumph of Empire. The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine (2016) might be a good point to start as it begins right in the period you’re already familiar with and leads you through the 3rd century crisis to the beginning of Late Antiquity.
  
  
• Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. AD 150-750 (1989) is pretty much the foundational text for the modern scholarship on the named period. Its short, richly illustrated and just all around fantastic.
  
  
• Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire. A new history of Rome and the Barbarians (2007) covers the developments that would lead to the end of the Western Roman Empire.
  
  
• Peter Sarris, Empires of Faith. The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam. 500-700 (2011) has a larger focus than just Roman history and also concerns itself with the post Roman kingdoms in the west as well as (like the title says) the rise of Islam.
  
  
• Judith Herrin, Byzantium. The surprising life of a Medieval Empire (2009) is probably one of the best ways to first familiarise yourself with the huge timespan that is Byzantine history.
  
  
• Averil Cameron, The Byzantines (2006) is another excellent introduction to the entirety of Byzantine history.
  
  There are quite a lot of books that go into further detail about the different periods of Byzantine history but for the start those two general introductions should probably suffice. Of course you can always ask for more. I hope this helps!

In my Ancient Rome class in college, we used the textbook "The Romans: From Village to Empire" by Boatwright et al. The first half of the book focuses on Republican Rome and I feel like it is a great resource. The book costs $42 on Amazon, so it may be a bit pricy for amateur study; however, if you have access to Questia through a public or university library you can read it for free. (you can also gain access through Wikipedia, but you need to edit for a year and make 1000 edits to the site to be approved) Even if you don't have access, I suggest you use the one day free trial of Questia to read part of the book to decide if it is worth spending $42 to purchase it. Here is the Amazon link and here is the Questia link. It appears like the Questia link is for the first edition and not the second, which is the one that I read. In addition, you'll find a collection of other documents linked to that questia page. I have not read them, but some of them are free, so it could be worth checking them out.

Starting out in philosophy, I think, requires a historical approach. In order to fully understand some work (say, Marx's Das Kapital) means you need the background literature that led up to that work (say, Hegel's Phenomenology). The important thing to remember when reading through the history of western philosophy, is that all of these writers are in dialogue with one another, and that none of their views makes perfect sense in a vacuum. So, I suggest we start at the beginning.

Plato. Folks will tell you to read the pre-socratics, but if you aren't a professional or a student, it's not entirely necessary. Plato is the ground floor in terms of western philosophy and the upshot is that the dialogues are fairly easy and light reading (in the context of western philosophy, which can often get very dense). I'd suggest the Meno which covers a bunch of intro epistemology, the Republic, which covers a lot of P's political and moral thought. The trial and death of socrates is also really great. It's a collection of dialogues.

Then I'd suggest Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics which is a direct response to Plato.

Then I'd move on to the early modern guys. Some will tell you to dig into the Romans and the medieval stuff, but again, if you just want a beginners list, I'd skip em for now.

In terms of early modern stuff, the period runs roughly from Francis Bacon or Galileo, to Kant. All of these guys are debating with each other so its important to move through it chronologically, in order to understand the context of the writings.

I always suggest that my students pick up this book: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Philosophy-Anthology-Primary-Sources/dp/0872209784/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375192962&sr=1-1&keywords=early+modern+philosophy+reader
Get an old edition, and a dirty used cheap one if you are buying the book. No point in going nuts when there's no difference between editions.

It is an anthology (with good translations) of Descartes' Meditations, Spinoza's Ethics, Leibniz's Monadology, Locke's Essay, Berkeley's Three Dialogues, Hume's Enquiry, and Kant's Prolegomena. Plus more- checkout the table of contents.
This book will give you the whole history of early modern, without you having to buy a ton of different books. But these are the books a beginner would read, in this order.

Once my beginner had finished these texts, he'd have a good idea of what the history of philosophy looks like, and would be in a really good position to start tackling more contemporary stuff. It will also give you an idea of what issues in philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, political philosophy, etc.) you are interested in so you can dial in what else you want to read.

Remember!: All of these books are in the public domain and you can find free copies online. The only downside is that the translations can be a little rough.

I also suggest (as you can no doubt tell by now), that a beginner tackle primary sources. People will tell you to read some secondary book that "breaks it down for you," but the only way to build up the ability to read the history of philosophy is by actually digging in and getting messy. Philosophy can be really hard to read, but you get the hang of it. But this only happens if you struggle with the text's themselves. The payoff is worth it.

Edit: /u/realy provided an absolutely badass reading list from St. John's undergraduate great books program. Check it out!!

The AH books and resources list is your friend, but as its recommendations are scattered through a mainly geographical listing, I will compile some of the key cites for you here.

Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas (1971): One of the pioneering works on how anthropology can help our study of history focusing on superstition in the late medieval/early modern period, this is a fantastic read and a real insight into a still-young school of historical analysis.

Thinking with Demons by Stuart Clark (1999): this is one of two mandatory books on Early Modern Witchcraft (the other is Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic). It's hard to summarize what is a monumental piece of work, but examines the idea of witches and how that idea functions through different intellectual sections of life. It has a bibliography that will make you weep with inadequacy and throw your work into the nearest witch-bonfire.

The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ronald Hutton (1999). A study of the history and development of modern Pagan Witchcraft.

Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald Hutton (2009). A history of the intertwined development of modern Celtic scholarship and religious revivalism in Britain.

The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe by Brian Levack: Levack gives important background and context to his discussion of the witch-hunt. The work's value as an introduction to the topic is evident, as the book is now in its third edition.

Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century Funkenstein, Amos. 1986. An interesting read detailing the various views of emerging scientific thought and the prevalence of religious faith. The book takes time to work from a sociological as well as historical viewpoint to allow for a broader take.

Egyptian Mythology: a guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt.

https://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Mythology-Goddesses-Traditions-Ancient/dp/0195170245

Also if you have an audible account/ are interested in audiobooks or online learning Audible has free audiobook versions of The Great Courses Plus lectures on mythology. They’re great lectures.

Ps. If you’re unaware there’s a fun podcast for the casual myth fan called Myths and Legends. Personally I love Jason’s work — it’s a bit trivialized sometimes but it’s good fun. He has a way of crafting narrative out of an amalgamation of varied stories from myth and folklore.

It's not Marx, but Plato's dialog Crito sets up the social contract theory. Also, reading Plato is fun and good for you.

https://www.amazon.com/Trial-Death-Socrates-Plato/dp/0872205541

It's ultimately utter horseshit and a pure rationalization for colonial exploitation and the rise of the bourgeoisie, but if you want to understand American society, Locke's Second Treatise of Government is foundational.

Rousseau's The Social Contract and Second Discourse are universally foundational and Rousseau's fairly easy to read and not a total chud.

Mr. Dick remembers Kant's Towards a Perpetual Peace as being pretty o.k., but reading Kant is always daunting.

FUN FACTS FROM MYTH


As always remember that apparently myth can reveal spoilers so take care. Now Pat mentioned root words today once so what better episode to talk about how


NORSE AND GREEK MYTHOLOGY ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME THING: That’s right. From a certain point of view, Kratos is just fighting the same gods all over again. See, practically all European languages share a common root, with Indian languages. This can be seen by comparing languages, finding similarities, and looking at likely/common sound changes. Modern linguistics can do this so well that there are even theoretical reconstructions of this language. As such, people also have noticed similarities between the names of gods in these regions, the fact that they tend to be polytheistic and share the same roles… and people realise that of course these too share a common root in a primal religion we have no actual preserved texts from. It’s actually where my username comes from!

This religion’s chief deity was Dyēus Phter, the Sky Father. In Greek mythology, this is obviously Zeus, and in Norse mythology, this became Tyr, via the Germanic Tiwaz. This leads to theories that Tyr actually used to be the head of the Norse pantheon, before worship of the more popular Odin and Thor pushed him out to a more minor role.

Another important figure was Perkwunos, the Striker. This was most likely a god of thunder and the oak, and incarnates in Norse mythology, of course, as Thor. In Greek mythology, it’s likely that this god was absorbed into Zeus, as the word κεραυνός, related to Zeus as one of his titles IIRC, also descends etymologically from the same root.

Other common threads include the idea of a Chaoskampf that symbolically represented day to day life, and “dragons” who are fought by great heroes (Thor vs Jormungandr, Hercules vs Hydra, etc.)

There is a notable exception amongst the major gods to this rule however. Odin has no apparent attestation in other Proto-Indo-European religions, at least not linguistically as a god. He seems to stand alone. However, he does have an etymological history. Odin’s name comes from the PIE word of inspiration as far as we can see, and as such is possibly the deification of inspiration, prophecy and magic itself. This is very unique amongst Proto-Indo-European pantheon heads.

NORNIR: Speaking of comparative mythology, these are the Norse equivalent of the Greek Fates, likely also from a common source in PIE religion. They are goddesses that control the destiny of not only men, but the gods themselves, and three Jotunn (Urdr, Verdandy and Skuld) are the most important of them, and live in a well beneath the roots of Yggdrasil. In Norse mythology, fate plays an impossibly important role. No man, Jotunnor god can avoid their fate, and all roads lead inevitably to Ragnarok. There are lesser Norns, however, ruling over less important things.

GROA: I know a Jotunn from the Eddas by the name of Groa. She is legitimately a volva, a seeress, and a practitionar of Seidr, and thus it would make sense for her to see visions of the future. However... I don't remember anything in the story about Odin killing her for a book of prophecy. Unless someone can correct me on this, this seems to be something the game made up for its own story.

Groa is known for trying to work a healing spell on Thor after his fight with Hrungnir, yet as she worked Thor told her tales of his deeds. He told her a story of how he saved her husband's life, turning his frostbitten toe into the morning star. This caused Groa to get flustered, and she screwed up her spell a little bit, leaving stones in Thor's head forever.

There aren't any real free resources where you can learn about PIE that are reliable, as it's obscure outside of academia unfortunately. But if you're willing to shell out 60 bucks, this book is a pretty good introduction. As always, if you're interested in Norse myth I recommend checking out Jackson Crawford's YouTube channel.

Unfortunately some of Egypt's abilities and knowledge have been vastly exaggerated. They had strong rivals to the north for much of the periods where the empire was the strongest. In later periods Pharaohs ruled for shorter periods of times. In many of the ruling eras there was massive civil and political unrest. Keeping the country together and under control seems to have been more of a priority. This is especially true during periods where the Nile didn't flood properly and you had famine and drought. I strongly recommend if you are interested in the intricacies you read The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt I don't think there is one nail in the coffin answer to your question. The Eqyptians after the unification definitely had designs on conquering lands further to the north. However each time they were met by strong adversaries and a myriad of circumstances that prevented this from occuring.

I would read "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" by Edward Luttwak. Here it is at Amazon

There's not much I can say that isn't said better in the reviews, but it's a great read and strikes an amazing balance between being too dense or too cursory. It seems perfectly tailored to your topic: he writes just as much about soft power (espionage and diplomacy) as he does about military organization and operations.

Here is the WSJ's review.

First off, it sounds like you are respectful of her beliefs and want to to be kind, which is the way to go if you want to keep the relationship healthy.

People believe because they want to believe, not because they went through and systematic philosophical analysis. People also get insulted when you psychoanalyze them, wrt their religious beliefs or otherwise.

I don't think you need to explain anything. Either you have faith or you don't. And you just don't.

But should anyone want to do apologetics at you, stepping out of the framework entirely is the way to go, imo. (I wouldn't do this with a girlfriend because you probably want to keep getting along with her and this is a very emotional thing.)

You know that the scientific method, while not perfect, is the best tool we have for understanding the universe. Well, religion is just another thing going on in the universe that scientists study. There are tons and tons of books on where, how, and why the cult of Yahweh emerged and developed. They even have study Bibles annotated with real historical and cultural context.

I recently went through a Mesopotamia phase and read a bunch of stuff and I would recommend A History of the Ancient Near East by Van De Mieroop.

https://www.amazon.com/Legions-Rome-Definitive-History-Imperial/dp/1250004713/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1554330687&sr=1-1 This a reference book rather then a story but one of the best books on the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Romans-Robert-Knapp/dp/0674284224/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=invisible+romans&qid=1554330866&s=books&sr=1-1

Looks more at the average people

​

https://www.amazon.com/Day-Life-Ancient-Rome-Curiosities/dp/1933372710/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SQM52LIXLPEI&keywords=a+day+in+the+life+of+ancient+rome&qid=1554330990&s=books&sprefix=a+day+in+the+life+of+Anc%2Cstripbooks%2C175&sr=1-1

This one is more story then dry text book.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Around-Roman-Table-Feasting-Ancient/dp/0226233472/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HXK35FACBK1&keywords=around+the+roman+table&qid=1554331210&s=books&sprefix=around+the+roman+%2Cstripbooks%2C168&sr=1-1

Translating Roman recipes mostly from Apicius but with other sources.

Not all may be what you are looking for but I own them and have enjoyed them. I really mean it about the first one.

And if you buy good condition used books your not even half way through your allotment at this point.

I'm a fan of Antony Beevor.

I know, I know, he's an author, not a book. "Stalingrad" and "Berlin" were excellent, imo. I think you can trust whatever he writes.

I really enjoyed I F Stone's "Trial of Socrates."

The lengths Stone went to to write this is almost as fascinating as the book. (if for no other reason than that he can put a paragraph together that doesn't make your eyes glaze over. Same with Beevor.)

Actually, I think Stone's book is my all-time favorite in the genre. If I had a spare copy, I would send it to you!

I see! You should definitely read atleast one sort of "basic" Egyptian mythology book, if only so you have a good base. I started with this book and it did the job. If you want any other recs in general for Egyptian religion and magic, just let me know (or look through my posts!). Something else to keep in mind while you learn- Pharonic culture existed for thousands of years, and AE religion and their conceptions of the nature of the gods shifted during that time, so some of the "mystic" texts one can find might treat Set or Djehuty very differently than how they were viewed in the 3rd Dynasty, which is different than the 17th, which is different than during Hellenistic times. Good luck!

>Is there a good book I could read to learn more about (proto-)Indo-Europeans and all those subgroups you mentioned?

For the Proto-Indo-Europeans, you can read Beekes, Mallory, or Fortson. For the Pre-Indo-European people, there has yet to be a book addressing all of them (and there's a good chance there will never be a book, because so little is known about them). You can see my blog, which I linked in my first post, to see a survey of all the Pre-Indo-Europeans. From there, you must google search. If you have any questions about specific Pre-IE people, just ask.

>I'd like to learn more about this stuff too. In a way, it seems to parallel the old (and probably wrong?) legends about the ancient history of India.

Yes, well, the linguistic conquerors of Europe were the same conquerors of India: the Indo-Europeans. A lot more of the Pre-IE cultures of India survive than do in Europe.

edit: A side-note, my list on my blog is incomplete. There is a bounty of Pre-IE studies of tribes in northernmost Europe: the Baltic strip, the higher reaches of Sweden, Finland, and Norway, and the expanse of northern Russia. These tribes are often called Pre-Proto-Uralic tribes, because those lands were displaced by the Urals rather than the Indo-Europeans. Unfortunately, the good majority of stuff being written on it is in Finnish, which I can't read.

The best book I recommend is specifically called "Roman Battle Tactics" which comes from Osprey Publishing. The book comes in a short digestible form with great insights and graphics on the basic tactics used by the Romans during the late Republic and early empire.

https://ospreypublishing.com/roman-battle-tactics-109bc-ad313-pb

I would also recommend the book "In the name of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy. This one is definitely longer but focuses specifically on the great generals throughout Rome's history and the ways in which they wielded their armies.

http://www.amazon.com/In-Name-Rome-Empire-Phoenix/dp/0753817896

>I imagine a world where technological progress has been inhibited, and the world has been in a medieval state. (...)

In a "Medieval state", so, that can be summed up by much quicker technological advancement than either in Roman times or during the renaissance?

Medieval as in, religion had much less importance to civic life than in Rome (when religious festivals were a civic duty, which did put Christians at odds with traditions) and much less power than during the renaissance (when the papacy had regained independence from secular states)? a Church which basically is struggling to liberate itself from secular domination - until it did, at the very end of the middle ages, thanks to the Cluniac movement. A church that is the main driving engine of scientific progress (oh, this one will hurt some Redditors' head to no end.)

In short, a "middle ages" that would look nothing like the actual middle ages. This period was anything but low-tech or dominated by religion, and religious institutions such as the papacy and monasteries were incredibly important to scientific/technological progress. I wonder how much time before the public psyche catches up to historical research in this area. Because those views are totally at odds.

Sources:

• God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
  
• The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
  
• The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts - Cambridge Studies in the History of Science
  
• God and Reason in the Middle Ages
  
  

I's not the "same Bible," though. Not really. The Bible is not one book, it is a library of books written over hundreds of years by many different authors with many different theological viewpoints or assumptions.

If you're really interested in a decent academic treatment of the evolution from polytheism to monotheism in the Bible I would recommend


From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends by Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch

Another good book on the subject of Israel's original polytheism and rather late (post exilic) conversion to monotheism is William Dever's Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel

Byzantium by Judith Herrin is extensive yet accessible. She is a professional archaeologist and an academic. The book is a rung on the ladder above pure popular history but is still readable if you have little background info on Byzantium. It is also a broad overview encompassing the entire span of the Empire.

I also recommend Lars Brownworth's 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast for a first contact with Byzantium. This is less academic and more popular history than Herrin's book, but is very well researched and also covers the entire span of Byzantine history from its Roman roots to its fall.

If you are looking to get handle on the Aristotle metaphysical worldview first, which is incredibly helpful since Aquinas builds on it, I recommend the fairly short book Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. The book is only 200 pages and is written by Mortimer Adler, a renowned polymath and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago (who actually ended up becoming Catholic before he died).

In fact, while u/Suppa-time recommends Feser's Aquinas, which is an absolutely great recommendation, I found reading Aristotle for Everybody first was enormously helpful and that I was able to hit the ground running when I picked up Feser's book.

You're spot-on with regard to the "genderless" approach to deity taken by many Abrahamic religions or denominations. In Judaism, you'll find generally one of two options: either God is referred to alternately as male or female (only in modern, very liberal branches of Judaism-- and even then, not in every congregation), or God is referred to primarily in masculine terms but then the Shekinah is referred to in a feminine sense. The Shekinah is a sort of "Holy spirit", and in that manifestation, is accepted in all forms of Judaism, from ultra-Orthodox to the most liberal branches. Some people-- both Jews and scholars-- conflate or equate the Shekinah to the ancient goddess Asherah; this is a pretty controversial opinion, but regardless, there's essentially irrefutable evidence that Judaism descended from Levantine polytheistic religions that certainly included goddesses as well as male deities, so there's that. This is a particularly interesting scholarly book on that matter.

> I already read that one, what is wrong with that one??

I recently purchased Robert Alter's Hebrew Bible translation, which he translated with the goal of maintaining the literary characteristics of the original Hebrew. He made a snarky comment that was something along the lines of "The authors of the KJV had an amazing grasp of the English language, but not so much biblical Hebrew, while modern translations have an amazing grasp of biblical Hebrew, but not so much English." For a casual read, IMO, whatever speaks to you is fine, but you need to be aware the KJV is not the most accurate.

As for your quest for a text, I am not one of the scholars here, but I found this book approachable: A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 BC.

I think you will learn the most by reading five textbooks, such as A History of Philosophy, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; or something like Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, and An Introduction to Political Philosophy.

If what you have in mind is more of a "Great Books" program to get your feet wet with some classic works that are not too difficult, you could do a lot worse than:

• Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, often published together under the title The Trial and Death of Socrates. Socrates is so important that we lump together all Greek philosophers before him as "the Presocratics," and this cycle of dialogues is a great window on who he was and what he is famous for.
  
• The Basic Works of Aristotle. "The philosopher of common sense" is not a particularly easy read. Cicero compared his writing style to "a flowing river of gold," but all the works he prepared for publication are gone, and what we have is an unauthorised collection of lecture notes written in a terse, cramped style that admits of multiple interpretations. Even so, one can find in Aristotle a very attractive system of metaphysics and ethics which played a major role in the history of philosophy, and holds up well even today.
  
• René Descartes, Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy, not so much because modern philosophers have widely followed his particular positions (they haven't) but because he set the agenda, in a way, with his introduction of methodological scepticism.
  
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I think Elizabeth Anscombe had it right in judging Hume a "mere brilliant sophist", in that his arguments are ultimately flawed, but there is great insight to be derived from teasing out why they are wrong.
  
• If I can cheat just a little more, I will lump together three short, important treatises on ethics: Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Anscombe's paper "Modern Moral Philosophy".

Unfortunately, a lot of the readings on the topic are not widely available to the public, since they are in Archaeology and History journal articles. I read a lot of this stuff in university.

However, if you want to get into the Late Bronze Age in general, there are a few really good resources available to the general public.

1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed is a great survey of the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations in the Near East. It's great for understanding just how complex and interconnected the world of the 12th century B.C. and earlier was.

A History of the Ancient Near East by van de Mieroop, and

The Ancient Near East by James Pritcherd both present an overview of the Ancient Near East, though both go into what is considered 'Classical' Near East as well.

Also, anything by Trevor Bryce, is worth a read, especially his work on the Hittites.

Because by the time of Constantine's conversion, Christianity was no longer an obscure cult made up of subversive elements from the lower classes, but was firmly entrenched among the class of urban professionals and rising new military and bureaucratic officials that made up a very influential chunk of the Empire's demographics.

The Crisis of the Third Century brought substantial social and cultural changes to the Roman Empire. Most notably, it brought a rising tide of "new men" from outside the traditional upper classes of the empire to prominence. Their avenue to power was primarily through the military, for the Crisis was a series of divisive and devastating civil wars between self-proclaimed emperors:

> For the Roman Empire was saved by a military revolution. Seldom has a society set about cutting out the dead wood in its upper classes with such determination. The senatorial aristocracy was excluded from military commands in about 260. The aristocrats had to make way for professional soldiers who had risen from the ranks. These professionals recast the Roman army.

> ...

> The soldiers and officers [who fought in the Danubian campaigns], who had seemed so raw to the Mediterranean aristocrats of a previous age, emerged as heroes of the imperial recovery of the late third and early fourth centuries...The army was an artesian well of talent. By the end of the third century, its officers and administrators had ousted the traditional aristocracy from control of the empire.

These "new men" formed the basis of a new imperial bureaucratic and military administration that would preside over a recovery that spanned the fourth century. Their rise heralded the dawn of a new system of advancement that relied more on merit than birth. As a result, men from disparate regions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions could rise to high positions with the administration.

This new culture and influx of talent allowed for men with Christian beliefs to quickly entrench themselves into the highest levels of Roman governance once Constantine converted to Christianity.

> The reign of Constantine, especially the period from 324-337, saw the final establishment of a new "aristocracy of service" at the top of Roman society...After the conversion of Constantine in 312, the emperors and the majority of their courtiers were Christians. The ease with which Christianity gained control of the upper classes of the Roman empire in the fourth century was due to the revolution that had placed the imperial court at the centre of a society of "new" men, who found it comparatively easy to abandon conservative beliefs in favour of the new faith of their masters.

So now the question is how Christianity was so appealing to this wave of "new men" (outside of how conversion allowed them to rise more quickly in the court of a Christian emperor).

Christianity offered a few distinct advantages compared to other religions at the time, chiefly its culture of community, exclusivity, and egalitarianism. Anyone could become a Christian no matter their ethnic, economic, or former religious background. And once you were a Christian, you were part of an exclusive community, of which many were men from well-off economic backgrounds and invested their wealth in improving that community. Thus, Christianity appealed to men who felt they lacked a social identity, and/or were trying to carve out a new niche for themselves in post-Crisis Roman society; and since the turmoil of the Crisis uprooted many people and produced a new group of ambitious, talented social risers, Christianity found itself with a wealth of new converts.

> The Church was also professedly egalitarian. A group in which there was 'neither slave nor free' might strike an aristocrat as utopian, or subversive. Yet in an age when the barriers separating the successful freedman from the declasse senator were increasingly unreal, a religious group could take the final step of ignoring them. In Rome the Christian community of the early third century was a p[lace where just such anomalies were gathered and tolerated: the Church included a powerful freedman chamberlain of the emperor; its bishop was the former slave of that freedman; it was protected by the emperor's mistress, and patronized by noble ladies.

> For men whose confusions came partly from no longer feeling embedded in their home environment, the Christian Church offered a drastic experiment in social living...

-----

> The Christian Church suddenly came to appeal to men who felt deserted. At a time of inflation, the Christians invested large sums of liquid capital in people; at a time of increased brutality, the courage of Christian martyrs was impressive; during public emergencies, such as plague or rioting, the Christian clergy were shown to be the only united group in town, able to look after the burial of the dead and to organize food-supplies...Plainly, to be a Christian in 250 brought more protection from one's fellows than to be a civis romanus.

> ...

> What marked the Christian Church off, and added to its appeal, was the ferociously inward-looking quality of life...the wealth of the community returned to the members of the community alone, as part of the "loving-kindness of God to His special people.

> ...

> The appeal of Christianity still lay in its radical sense of community: it absorbed people because the individual could drop from a wide impersonal world into a miniature community, whose demands and relations were explicit.

Once Christians gained access to the highest levels of government via the "new men", and those "new men" carved out their own position among the elite classes of the Roman Empire, Christianity continued the process of adapting to the new culture of the classical world. The Crisis of the Third Century had brought more than civil war - foreign powers hostile to the Empire, such as Sassanid Persia and the Germanic tribes along the Rhine, had taken advantage of the weakness of Roman borders and launched raids and invasions into imperial territory. The mood of the apparent collapse of the "civilized", classical world took deep hold across the Roman Empire, and the narrative of Christianity was well-suited to adapt to this new mood:

> Hence the most crucial development of these centuries: the definitive splitting-off of the "demons" as active forces of evil, against whom men had to pit themselves. The sharp smell of an invisible battle hung over the religious and intellectual life of the Late Antique man...To men increasingly pre-occupied with the problem of evil, the Christian attitude to the demons offered an answer designed to relieve nameless anxiety: they focused this anxiety on the demons and at the same time offered a remedy for it. The devil was given vast but strictly-mapped powers. He was an all-embracing agent of evil in the human race; but he had been defeated by Christ and could be held in check by Christ's human agents.

-----

> The early fourth century was the great age of the Christian Apologists...They claimed that Christianity was the sole guarantee of [classical] civilization - that the best traditions of classical philosophy and the high standards of classical ethics could be steeled against barbarism only through being confirmed by the Christian revelation; and that the beleaguered Roman empire was saved from destruction only by the protection of the Christian God.

When Constantine very publicly converted to Christianity, he was inundated by a flood of Christian "new men" who desired his patronage either for their own advancement within the government or for the advancement of their community's interests under his rule. By surrounding himself with Christians, Constantine surrounded himself with Christian propaganda, and allowed that propaganda to spread throughout the empire. And because Christianity was already entrenched among the urban middle class, combined with the eastern empire (the focus of Constantine's power and attention) being considerably more urbanized and developed than the western empire, this led to the majority of the entire empire becoming firmly Christian from the bottom up, despite the resistance of the traditionalist pagan aristocracy:

> This prolonged exposure to Christian propaganda was the true "conversion" of Constantine. It began on a modest scale when he controlled only the under-Christianized western provinces; but it reached its peak after 324, when the densely Christianized Christianized territories of Asia Minor were united to his empire.

Constantine's nephew, Julian the Apostate, who became emperor after the death of Constantine's son Constantius II, was a firm pagan who sought to roll back Christian infiltration within the upper levels of Roman government. But his premature death on the battlefield in 363, only three years into his reign, smothered those plans in the crib. The new Christian domination of the Roman world was here to stay.

Source: The World of Late Antiquity, by Peter Brown (pub. 1971)

I encourage you to seek out further replies and sources to this question. My sole source is a secondary one, and an old one, despite being an extremely influential work in the historiography of the late Roman Empire.

Hmmm...so many recommendations. First, you need to have a basic grasp of philosophy (particularly Aristotelian philosophy, which leads to Thomistic thought).

• Aristotle for Everybody is very handy for getting a very basic grasp of philosophy as it pertains to the four causes and natural law.
  
  
• Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith uses a lot of natural philosophy and Thomistic thought to give "reasoned answers to questions of Faith."
  
  
• Transformation in Christ: On the Christian Attitude is a very dense, philosophical tome on Catholic philosophical thought. Very insightful and...really a work of art.
  
  
• Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio is a beautiful work from John Paul II explaining how the Church uses faith and reason together to defend Her claims.
  
  There are...so many more recommendations I could give, but working your way through these will take some time.
  
  >My dislike more from the fact that Catholics seem to think that these views should be encoded in society's laws rather than that they hold them.
  
  All of civil law ought to find its root cause in natural moral law. The Church uses not simply faith alone to defend Her claims, but also natural law. As such, there are certain Truths present (and observable) in natural law that should be reflected in our everyday behavior and legislated by the civil authority.
  
  We believe in an objective right and an objective wrong: a defined good and a defined evil. The difficulty, I think, is getting people to see the same thing!

Those guys are horrible at history. I would recommend going to /r/badhistory for rebuttals, in the meantime I found some books that I think can really help out debunking this myth.

Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction

Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

When Science and Christianity Meet

The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution

The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450

The Savior of Science

For the Glory of God

The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science

The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo

Yes this is a long list but that's because it's studied so often ;). I hope this helps.

Great post.

The Wikipedia entry on Proto-Indo-European religion does a good job of elaborating on the links.

Noted archaeologist, J. P. Mallory, has done fine work expounding on the theories underlying the Indo-European hypothesis.

His books, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (more accessible of the two) and The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, are well worth the read.

Like Equas said, you'll find a lot of the history of Daoism in bigger overviews of Chinese history. There's one I'm reading now that I found in a used bookstore called Sources of Chinese Tradition, which is a multi-volume work. The first volume has two chapters devoted to Taoism and Neo-Taoism respectively, and also talks about it whenever it comes into play with other religious periods.

I also highly recommend the book itself. I'm only a little ways through it because it is indeed very dry, but it's done a fantastic job of explaining the roots of Chinese traditions so far.

I found the book online in a couple places:

Amazon

Alibris

Since you mention wanting to learn about other neo pagan belief systems, I'll speak up for Helenic polytheism, which is the modern worship of the Greek gods, usually with an emphasis on reconstructing what the ancients really practiced.

Kharis: Hellenic Polytheism Explored https://www.amazon.com/dp/143823192X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_b7E6BbE517CQB. This is the book I recommend giving to relatives who want to know who we are and what we practice in the modern age.

Greek Religion https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674362810/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_c8E6Bb542VQ1W. This is an academic text on religion in ancient Greece that is very useful both in learning what the ancients did and believed as well as a source book used by many modern practitioners as they adapt ancient beliefs and practices to modern life.

Argh! I came too late for this!

Anyway, the reason for worshipping other gods so frequently is that the Israelites really never believed in only one God, until the exile in Babylon.

Rather, it was the OTHER way around: In brief periods of time before the exile, the Israelites (or should I say Judahites?) were forbidden from worshipping various gods - or even worshipping Yahweh outside the "official way" - due to the religious reforms of Hezekiah (around 715 BCE) and later, Josiah (around 622 BCE).

Archaeologist William G. Dever explains in his book "Did God have a wife?" how evidence of polytheistic cult have been found in various Iron Age sites, e.g. statues of Asherah, 8th century BCE pieces of pottery with written texts saying "Yahweh and his Asherah", the one from Kuntillet Ajrud being the most famous.

Your interpretation of Israel falling in sin over and over because they were "very stubborn" is the consequence of a clever retcon done by the writers of Deuteronomy and the books of Judges, Samuel and Kings. In other words, they rewrote the past. You can notice this when you read the second book of Kings, the parts where some king "did do what was wrong in the Eyes of the Lord" simply meant "allowed worship of other gods". With a little wit, you'll understand that these passages were written by a prophet of Yahweh and obviously had a bias to them.

If you wish to know a more detailed account on how Israel went monotheistic, you can read "The Early History of God" by Mark S. Smith (warning: Very difficult read), where he details how the various gods of Canaan merged and differentiated until Yahweh became the dominant deity.

EDIT: For example, the passages where Yahweh is depicted as standing on a cloud are adaptations (perhaps we should say plagiarisms) of Baal as "rider of clouds". Take a look at Psalm 29, where the imagery to describe God is of storms and thunder. Canaanite Baal was always known as the god of storms. And God speaking on the top of a mountain also parallels with Baal.

>Leo II/Charlemagne or John XII/Otto I.

Charlemagne (Charles/Carl the Great) ruled three kingdoms before declaring himself Emperor, and even then, with Pope Leo III's "approval." (It may have been at sword-point) And made the name Charles/Carl comes to mean something akin to Caesar in the hearts and minds of Europe. If you have any better candidates to claim the title of Emperor for themselves, put him or her forth.

Leo II was a Byzantine (aka Eastern Roman Empire) Emperor. Did you mean Pope Leo III who crowned Charlemagne and John XII who crowned Otto? Otto I was on good terms with the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII according to my sources who initially opposed him taking the title Emperor (until he married one of their daughters).

In the Name of Rome - Adrian Goldsworthy

This book gave a lot of interesting insight into the thought processes and decisions of many of Rome's greatest generals and I found it an enjoyable read.

The "Tao of Seneca" just uses the public domain Richard Mott Gummere translation, which can be found for free on Wikisource, along with the rest of Seneca's writings.

A YouTuber who goes by the name The Rugged Pyrrhus has recorded all of the letters using the Gummere translation, and I think he does a better job than what I've heard of the "Tao of Seneca" audiobook.

In general, I think it's always good to have multiple translations in order to compare. The Wikisource version includes Gummere's footnotes, which can be helpful, so I would reference that one. Unlike the Penguin edition, Wikisource also has all of Seneca's letters. The only modern translation that I know of that has all of the letters is Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca) translated by Margaret Graver, but I don't own it and can't comment on the quality (other than what the Amazon reviews say).

So you are probably fine with Penguin and Wikisource, but if you want a modern translation of all the letters, Margaret Graver's book might be the one to buy.

Edit: If you don't care about having a modern translation of all the letters and you enjoy Seneca, perhaps look into getting Dialogues and Essays (Oxford World's Classics), which you can supplement with the public domain Wikisource translations for comparison. Unlike the Oxford World Classics edition, the Margaret Graver book has all of Seneca's essays, but it is a bit more expensive.

Also one book I've been curious is this

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Religion-Walter-Burkert/dp/0674362810/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463239850&sr=8-1&keywords=greek+religion

it says it's good, but it was written in the seventies. Has there been any great development since then?

I've also heard of this book which might interest the OP. But yeah, if you're looking for a good book on Thomism, you can't go wrong with Feser.

My favorite books by him include How to Read a Book and Aristotle for Everybody.

I would highly recommend this author for anyone looking to study Thomas Aquinas - or for anyone who simply would like an introduction to philosophy.

Another recommendation for Byzantine history: The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward Luttwak. Focused on Byzantine foreign policy, but with many fascinating digressions.

If you have the time I highly recommend you check out this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Trial-Socrates-I-F-Stone/dp/0385260326

It's not long, it's a easy read and I found it fun. It doesn't take an 'anti' stance, he's just putting together the larger picture. He looks at what the primary sources have to say and then puts that into the wider picture of what was happening in Athens (and Greece) at the time. I'm no expert on Greek history or philosophy, though I do love reading about both and I found it assessable and insightful.

I started to reread it two years ago and left the damn thing at an airport bar. Hopefully someone found it and gave it a read. The only way a book should go.

As someone who routinely uses both Egyptian and Java, I can say categorically -- I like Egyptian a lot better. :)

If you're just writing games, you don't necessarily need the most current research -- anything in the last few decades is fine for your purposes. Unfortunately, there's a tremendous amount of material being printed still that goes back to the 19th century in Dover reprints that needs to be avoided at all costs. Also, remember that you're talking about almost three millennia of religious belief -- the differences between Old Kingdom and Roman period are far far greater than the differences between Upper and Lower Egypt.

In any event, here's a modern translation of the Book of the Dead (not Budge!):

http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptian-Book-Raymond-Faulkner/dp/0760773092/

The BotD isn't the greatest intro to the theogeny you may be looking for, but it's well known.

These are both current, but I don't know them:

http://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Mythology-Goddesses-Traditions-Ancient/dp/0195170245

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Gods-Goddesses-Ancient-Egypt/dp/0500051208

Avoid anything not written by an actual academic in the field -- there's way too much 'Egyptology' that's actually modern spirituality misusing ancient texts, and as noted, lots of reprints of Budge and Petrie that are now way out of date.

Last thoughts: If you're looking for thematic ideas for a game, there may be some good mythology childrens books that will hit the points and iconography you want (but will lack some of the more anatomically correct aspects of Egyptian divinity), and if you can, go through a real book store rather than Amazon :) If you're near Boston, Schoenhof's may have some of these.

Get The Sumerians
Here is a free summary
This is actual documented history, proof that the Bible, Torah & Quran are just derivatives of an even more ancient rich culture who had a polytheistic mythology.

IIRC I. F. Stone's thesis was that Socrates had actually fomented rebellion. There had been some sort of coup (or attempted coup) and there was speculation that he'd actually been an instigator.

I have no idea at this point whether that's actually plausible given the historical data, but it's interesting to contemplate.

Plato's account obviously lauds Socrates and makes his trial out to be pure persecution of free thought, but we should take that with a grain of salt, right?

Sorry for your disappoint. However, you STILL might find some historical writing pretty fascinating. Try reading Inanna, Goddess of Heaven and Earth or Sumerians, might just be what you're looking for.

I was absolutely fascinated by The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450. It's considerably deeper than Bryson's book (which I also found to be fantastic), but it really covers a lot of fascinating material about the development of science.

The historian Adrian Goldsworthy has made quite a successful career out of writing (normally very good) books about Rome and her military- depending on which era, I'm sure you can find something in his published works that could suit. Personally I'm very fond of In The Name of Rome: The Men Who Won The Roman Empire, which examines the changing nature of Roman warmaking using specific personalities (starting with Fabius Maximus and Claudius Marcellus in the Second Punic War, he works his way through to Belisarius and the Battle of Dara).

FYI: in the /r/askhistorians booklist, the Byzantine recommendations are (of course) split between several different sections, so some are in Europe and some are in Middle East.

The word "Byzantium" or "Byzantine" isn't even necessarily mentioned in some of them, so for instance one of the standard introductory texts about the transition from "Rome" to "Byzantium," namely, Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity (which is excellent, read it!) might not appear at first glance.

Anyways, the point being that the book list is in general quite extensive, even if it's not always especially searchable : )

Theres an amazing anthology about Roman Legions.

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https://www.amazon.com/Legions-Rome-Definitive-History-Imperial/dp/1250004713/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541518916&sr=1-3&keywords=legions

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Highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684838230?pc_redir=1407365328&robot_redir=1

That's "aristotle for everybody" by Mortimer J. Adler.

I am a philosophy and theology major, and I had a lecture class by a guy with three PhDs as my introduction. I don't really know where to point you other than the dialogues by Plato. In that class we went from the pre-Socratics all the way to Dawkins and Hitchens just basically talking about the main parts of each philosopher's philosophical thought. Also what might help is looking up philosophical terms first so you can understand what people mean when they say things. The word "soul" is a good example of this. The popular concept of soul as such is very far from what Plato would have thought or Aristotle or Aquinas or Augustine or Descartes or whomever you want.

No problem, but make sure you check out the reading list here and the one on AH, they do a much better job then I or any of the links could, of particular relevance to your purposes are The Twilight of Ancient Egypt, The Religion of Ancient Egypt, Hellenistic Egypt, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, and The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt.

Personally, I liked the Hays translation of Meditations better than others, the translation is more up-to-date with modern English. I did not read meditations like I would read a novel. I used it as a daily reflections book, I would read a few passages at the beginning of the day and process it throughout my day. Some of it is very dry, yes, but there are some real gems in there. It's just a matter of finding them (I marked them with stars in the margins!)

Another recommendation is Letters on Ethics: To Lucillius

It's a good read for historiographies, but I'm sure ancient historians have gone past some of his theories. Nevertheless, it's still regarded as a classic.

If you want more modern books, check out: Peter Brown's World of Late Antiquity and Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire

There are different theories on the fall, you could probably go through an entire library of them. I just picked selections I had from class, as I think these were more readable.

I'd recommend two books that, while in contention historiographically, together do a good job of describing the length of Roman decline and the immediate effects on its citizens: Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity.

Cool [Hesiod] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Seneca) sculpture.

 

If you want all 124 Letters, I recommend this [version.] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/022652843X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

This is an entirely appropriate subreddit! Let nobody discourage you from asking for sources here.

There are AskHistorians book lists. The Europe mentions Byzantine books in two sections, so you might be best served by doing a search for "Byz" (Well, three sections, except that one section mentions only Herrin, J. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, which I assume is the Herrin book you were referring to.)

AskHistorians has a podcast. Episodes 20 and 21 are "Byzantines: Macedonian and Komnenian Dynasties".

Excellent post by u/CaerBannog, I just wanted to add that if you wanted to learn more about the non-fictional history of Druids, you should check out Ronald Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain which examines in some detail the sources and history of modern interpretations of Druidism.

The Apis Bull was a bull seen as a Devine mediator between the gods and man. It was chosen at birth, and selected for having a whole list of features: it had to be a certain color, have certain markings, born at a certain time, etc. They kept it in its own sanctuary where it could be watched by the priests, and it’s movements and actions were seen as portents and messages from the gods. When these Apis Bulls died they were given a state funeral and mummified in their own tombs. It was a very old tradition, with Apis bull mummies found from the Old Kingdom, all the way to Ptolemaic Egypt. Alexander the Great is said to have met with the bull that was alive during his time.

Full disclosure, I have no clue if that’s what this bull is. I just finished a book on ancient Egypt and remembered that part.

I can recommend Judith Herrin's very readable Byzantium - The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire.

Judith Herrin's Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire is probably the most accessible one I've read. It's fun enough that I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't study history academically, but it's not just airport bookstore fare either.

There's a decent book that covers Socrates and the impact he had on his contemporaries, The Trial of Socrates. If you're really interested in how he impacted his surroundings, I think reading it will give you some answers.

Answering how much of an impact he would have had without his students is hard to answer, maybe there would have been other people writing about him, but then perhaps they would be seen as students of his as well.

In the Name of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy, is a pretty damn good look at Roman strategy and tactics over the course of the Republic/Empire.

http://www.amazon.ca/Aristotle-Everybody-Mortimer-J-Adler/dp/0684838230

is a good book containing the essence of Aristotle. It's not too difficult for young people to understand.

I absorbed my ethics from parents, school and the surrounding society, initially unquestioningly. But as I matured I re-examined them in the light of experience and cold logic (which is common among Atheists), and I retain those that make sense.

Just read this.

I enjoyed it.

The Loeb Classical Library mentioned already is ideal for the Greco-Roman world.

Literature from Ancient Mesopotamia is, for the most part, a bit older than you are looking for since the conventional date for the composition of the Iliad is 725 BCE and most Mesopotamian stuff was well before that date, but there is much, much more stuff in cuneiform sources than in other ancient languages.

For Akkadian literature see Foster, Before the Muses.

For the even older, Sumerian literature, see Black, The Literature of Ancient Sumer, most of which is available online on the authors' website: ETCSL.

For a broad survey of all the materials, in various languages, from all periods of the Ancient Near East (including Egypt) see Hallo, The Context of Scripture - 3 vols.

For China see De Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition - volume 1.

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy: Mortimer J. Adler.

https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Everybody-Difficult-Thought-Made/dp/0684838230

I've had this book for over 20 years and have read it at least 3 times, highly recommend.

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward N. Luttwak

Discusses the military, diplomatic and cultural strategies the Eastern Empire used to survive.


http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Strategy-Byzantine-Empire/dp/0674062078

If you're up for reading translations of source material, seminal readings on the topics, and commentary by the authors, I highly recommend Sources of East Asian Tradition by Wm. Theodore de Bary (comes in 2 volumes). It's condensed version of anthologies that focus specifically on [Chinese] (http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Chinese-Tradition-Vol-1/dp/0231109393), Japanese, and Korean traditions, history, and philosophy.

Though awesome, the Book of the Dead is focused more on ritual spells associated with preparation for the afterlife. There's also a number of different versions, none "canonical." This book, Egyptian Mythology by G. Harris, seems to cover the basics of Egyptian myth, and includes more "Gods and Godesses" type stories:

http://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Mythology-Goddesses-Traditions-Ancient/dp/0195170245/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

"Sedentary" meaning settled in villages and cities, farming for food as opposed to "nomadic" which entails constantly following migrating herds. Protecting and exploiting the mines long term is more viable with a sedentary culture just because the mines don't move. Even if you start with nomads, they will settle down to exploit the mines.

Consider using the Byzantine Empire as a model. It is an excellent example of your idea of building and manipulating alliances from surrounding cultures. Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire covers in good detail how they used both diplomacy and the weapon systems available to them to survive for nearly a thousand years.

u/HideousRabbit is right: this is not a philosophical question. That said, a classic in the field you describe is Walter Burkert's Greek Religion (German original 1977, English translation 1985). A more recent work is Daniel Ogden’s Companion to Greek Religion from 2007.

Sulla's story is ridiculously complicated. If you want a good survey about the republic and empire to get you started--one that's at the level of an entry college course--try The Romans: From Village to Empire.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Romans-Village-History-Earliest/dp/0199730571

To understand Sulla's significance, you have to have the full context. Really interesting stuff, mind you, but not something that's easy to sum up in a comment.

I seriously enjoyed Luttwak's Great Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, although it is not about a general in particular, but more about how the Eastern Roman Empire managed to survive repeated invasions of horseback archers from Central Asia. Really nicely-written, and makes one think about how the evolution of technology and economics affect warfare and history in general.

Here's your best source that I know of: http://www.amazon.com/Legions-Rome-Definitive-History-Imperial/dp/1250004713

Legionary's shields also varied from legion to legion, which you might find interesting.

I'm no expert but I've heard of no personal banners used by the legions, apart from the well-known standards (emblems on a long staff) that were carried at the head of the column.

Boatwright, Gargola, Lenski, and Talbert's The Romans: From Village to Empire is my textbook of choice for Roman history

Tutkittavaa on jäljellä ihan valtava määrä. Lähi-idässä on monia aikansa suurkaupunkeja joita ei ole vielä edes löydetty, puhumattakaan pienemmistä kohteista. Historiallista ainesta tutkimista odottamassa siellä on edelleen ihan käsittämätön määrä. Meillä ei tosiaankaan ole mitään hyvin tarkkaa kuvaa muinaishistoriasta, vaan tulkinnat perustuvat monesti hyvin rajalliseen aineistoon, ja aukkoja on valtavat määrät.

Asiaa ei auta, että viimeiset parikymmentä vuotta lähi-idässä on sattuneesta syystä ollut aika haastavaa järjestää kaivauksia. Kun sota tuhoaa ja paikalliset ryöstävät muinaisaarteita, kaikki odottelu tarkoittaa menetettyä tietoa. Siksi alueilla, joissa voidaan kaivaa, on kiire saada asioita aikaiseksi.

Mitä hyötyä näitä asioita sitten on tutkia? Varmasti voitaisiin jatkaa samaan malliin vaikkei kukaan tutkisi enää yhtään enempää muinaishistoriaa. Omasta mielestäni jo se, että on tietoa, jota emme tunne, on syy tutkia sitä. Ei voi olla mahdollista ymmärtää miksi maailma tänään näyttää siltä, miltä näyttää, ellei ymmärrä mm. lähi-idässä vuosituhansia sitten sattuneita tapahtumia. Näiden asioiden lukeminen ihan jo maallikkona antaa paljon perspektiiviä maailmaan. Itse koen ymmärtäväni esim. juutalaisuuden(ja sitä kautta kristinuskon ja islamin) syntyä paremmin, koska ymmärrän vähän sitä kontekstia, missä se tapahtui. Myös lukeminen siitä, kuinka tuhansia vuotta sitten kuolleet hallitsijat tärkeilivät omilla saavutuksillaan pistää miettimään miten kritiikittä nykyäänkin suhtaudumme ajatukseen yksittäisten ihmisten erityisestä tärkeydestä.

Toiseen kysymykseen voi vastata, että ala ei ole missään hyvin rahoitettua. Siksipä laadukkaista tutkijoista pitäisi pitää kiinni, mistä tahansa niitä löytyykin. Ei siitä välttämättä suoraa rahallista hyötyä ole, mutta tieto karttuu, ja kukaties sen myötä ymmärrys ja sivistys.

Jos oikeasti mietit, mitä hyötyä koko huuhaasta on, mikset lukisi asiaan liittyen itse? Helpompi päättää onko asia hyödyllinen, kun sitä tuntee vähän.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-3000-323-Blackwell-World/dp/111871816X

Ylläoleva on aika helppolukuinen ja hyvä yleiskatsaus aiheeseen jos asia lainkaan kiinnostaa.

So, what all you lads read this week? I finished this rather crazy book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Trial-Socrates-I-F-Stone/dp/0385260326

Paperback version of Graver and Long's book is coming out in November.

It's generally thought that Plato's early dialogues run closer to Socrates' actual words/teachings. I would start with the 4 dialogues making up the saga of the Death of Socrates. Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Trial-Death-Socrates-Plato/dp/0872205541

Xenophon was also a student of Socrates and like Plato wrote a dialog on the Trial of Socrates.

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by Mortimer Adler.

https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Everybody-Difficult-Thought-Made/dp/0684838230

Roman warfare: http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Warfare-Smithsonian-History/dp/0060838523/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409401487&sr=1-9

roman generals: http://www.amazon.com/Name-Rome-Roman-Empire-Phoenix/dp/0753817896/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409401487&sr=1-7

roman military: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Roman-Army/dp/0500288992/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409401487&sr=1-8