By the historians you hear on these shows
The Best Books on Ancient Greece
Twenty-six historians heard on these shows have written the twenty-nine books below; nothing else made the list.
29 books · 26 authors,
every one of them on a show indexed here
I feel like…
ThinkingAny
ideas, belief and how a polis was ordered
FeelingAny
stories, performance, art and ordinary lives
DoingAny
war and expansion
PeriodAny
when it happens
Book formAny
what kind of reading you want
If you want one book only, read Pandora's Jar. If you have read it, read Sparta.
Sparta and Athens
Six books from five historians on the two poleis that ran the classical Greek world between them.
Sparta
Paul Cartledge · 23 episodes to listen to first
Cartledge appears in twelve episodes on The Ancients and HistoryExtra, two of them named directly for the city, Sex & Sparta and The Spartans: Everything You Wanted to Know; this book is his full history of it.
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Democracy
Paul Cartledge · 23 episodes to listen to first
Two of Cartledge's twelve episodes on The Ancients and HistoryExtra carry the word in their own titles, Athens: Birthplace of Democracy? and Democracy and an Age of Genius; this 2018 book argues the case both titles raise.
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Sparta
Andrew Bayliss · 6 episodes to listen to first
Bayliss's three episodes on The Ancients and HistoryExtra are all named for the same city, Leonidas: King of Sparta, Hero of Thermopylae, then Origins of Sparta, then simply Sparta; this 2025 book is where that repetition points.
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Alternatives to Athens
Stephen Hodkinson · 4 episodes to listen to first
Hodkinson's two episodes on The Ancients, Life in Sparta and The Truth About Spartan Society, are named for one city; his 2003 book widens the argument to every classical Greek state that wasn't Athens.
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Athenian Empire
Polly Low · 12 episodes to listen to first
Two of Low's three episodes on The Ancients and Tides of History, on the Delian League and on Thucydides's account of the Athenian empire, sit directly under this book's subject; the third puts her with Robin Waterfield on Thucydides again, for Tides of History.
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Athenian Legacies
Josiah Ober · 2 episodes to listen to first
Ober's appearance on Tides of History asks what made classical Greece special, on Tides of History; this 2018 book on Athenian democracy's institutions is the long version of that same question.
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The Persian Wars and how Greeks fought
Five books on how Greeks fought, from the hoplite line to the invasions that nearly ended the whole experiment.
Economics of War in Ancient Greece
Roel Konijnendijk · 19 episodes to listen to first
Konijnendijk turns up nine times across Ancient Warfare Podcast and The Ancients, including both halves of the site's two-part Persian Wars episode; this 2024 book asks what fighting actually cost a polis.
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Thermopylae
Chris Carey · 2 episodes to listen to first
Carey's episode on The Ancients, The Legacy of Thermopylae, is named for exactly what this 2022 book covers; the subjects Open Library lists are Greek history and the battle itself.
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The ancient Greeks at war
Louis Rawlings · 1 episode to listen to first
Rawlings's one indexed appearance, Pyrrhus: Warlord of Ancient Greece, names one commander, is a narrower case than this 2013 survey, which Open Library files under military history across all of Greece.
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Athenian Hoplite vs Spartan Hoplite
Murray Dahm · 1 episode to listen to first
Dahm's one indexed appearance covers the wars after Alexander's death; this 2021 book, filed by Open Library under Greek history, sets the Athenian hoplite against the Spartan one, as its own title has it.
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The psychology of the Athenian hoplite
Jason Crowley · 1 episode to listen to first
Crowley's one episode, Ancient Greek warriors and Neolithic huts, shares its subject with this 2012 book, which Open Library files under military psychology and soldiers.
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Myth and religion
Six books on the gods and the myths that outlasted the religion built around them.
Pandora's Jar
Natalie Haynes · 15 episodes to listen to first
Haynes appears in eight episodes on The Ancients and HistoryExtra, including one titled simply Pandora; this 2022 book is catalogued under Greek mythology, and the same figure gives it its title.
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A Thousand Ships
Natalie Haynes · 15 episodes to listen to first
Two of Haynes's eight episodes on The Ancients and HistoryExtra are devoted to Helen of Troy by name; this 2021 novel is filed under Trojan War and fiction, women, telling that same war from the women's side.
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Underworld Gods in Ancient Greek Religion
Ellie Mackin Roberts · 5 episodes to listen to first
Mackin-Roberts's three episodes on The Ancients are Hestia, Persephone and Hera, one god each; this 2022 book is about the ones who ruled the dead, and Persephone is chief among them.
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Athena
Susan Deacy · 1 episode to listen to first
Deacy's one indexed appearance is on Ares, god of war; her book, published in 2008, picked a different Olympian, the one Open Library lists first among its subjects.
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Medea
Sarah Iles Johnston · 5 episodes to listen to first
Johnston's selected episode on The Ancients is on Dionysus, god of wine, a different figure; this 1997 book is catalogued under Medea (Greek mythology) and mythology in literature, the figure named in its own title.
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Brief Guide to the Greek Myths
Steve Kershaw · 4 episodes to listen to first
One of Kershaw's two episodes on The Ancients, Hephaestus: God of Fire, sits inside the same subject, mythology, greek, that Open Library gives this 2013 guide; the other covers the Minoan eruption.
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Theatre and philosophy
Four books on the stage and the schools that argued on it, from tragedy to Plato.
Sophocles
Edith Hall · 15 episodes to listen to first
Hall's three episodes on The Ancients and HistoryExtra run from the Iliad to two on Atlantis; this 2025 book, filed under classical philology, is her study of the tragedian named in its title.
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The hemlock cup
Bettany Hughes · 2 episodes to listen to first
Hughes's appearance on HistoryExtra is on ancient thinkers and the history of madness; this book is catalogued under Socrates and Athens (Greece), history, and is her biography of the philosopher himself.
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Mortal Voice in the Tragedies of Aeschylus
Sarah Nooter · 2 episodes to listen to first
Nooter's episode on HistoryExtra is a full survey of ancient Greek theatre; this 2022 book narrows that same subject to one playwright, catalogued under Aeschylus and Greek drama, tragedy.
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Plato of Athens
Robin Waterfield · 7 episodes to listen to first
Waterfield's three episodes on The Ancients, Tides of History and HistoryExtra include one titled Plato: the world's greatest philosopher?; this 2023 book is the same subject at length, from a historian also heard on the Olympic Games and on Thucydides.
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Alexander and the Hellenistic world
Five books on the three centuries after Alexander, when Greek was spoken as far as the Indus.
From democrats to kings
Michael Scott · 15 episodes to listen to first
Scott appears eleven times on The Ancients and HistoryExtra; this 2010 book traces democratic Athens toward the age of kings, exactly as its title has it.
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Creating a Hellenistic world
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones · 4 episodes to listen to first
Llewellyn-Jones's three episodes on The Ancients include one on the Ptolemies, The Cleopatras: A Dynasty of Rule Breakers; this 2011 book, catalogued under Hellenism and Macedonia, history, argues the fuller case about that world.
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The Hellenistic Court
Andrew Erskine · 1 episode to listen to first
Erskine's one indexed appearance is on the Colossus of Rhodes, a Hellenistic monument; this 2017 book is catalogued under monarchy, courts, greece, and Greece, politics and government.
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Soldiers, Wages, and the Hellenistic Economies
Charlotte van Regenmortel · 1 episode to listen to first
Van Regenmortel's one episode, on soldiers and labor markets in the Hellenistic world for Tides of History, states this 2024 book's own subject almost word for word.
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Greece, Macedon and Persia
Graham Wrightson · 1 episode to listen to first
Wrightson's one episode covers the successors who split Alexander's empire after his death; this 2015 book, tagged by Open Library with Alexander, the great, covers the reign that produced them.
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Minoans and Mycenaeans
Three books on the Bronze Age that came before the alphabet, and the Trojan War that got sung about after it fell.
Minoans
Ellen Adams · 2 episodes to listen to first
Adams's episode on HistoryExtra, The Minoans: everything you wanted to know, shares its subject exactly with this 2025 book, published the same year it aired.
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Knossos
Nicoletta Momigliano · 4 episodes to listen to first
Momigliano appears twice on The Ancients, on the Minoan labyrinth and on the rise of the Minoans; this book, on the site itself and catalogued under Crete (Greece), antiquities, was published in 1994.
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Helen of Troy
Bettany Hughes · 2 episodes to listen to first
This book carries subjects Open Library lists as Helen of Troy (Greek mythology), civilization, mycenaean and Greece, history, to 146 B.C.; Hughes's appearance on HistoryExtra is on a different subject entirely.
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Every name on this page is heard on a show already indexed in this section, and every
book is looked up on Open Library under that name and a Greek-history subject gate, never
guessed. Twenty-six historians and twenty-nine books passed that gate.
The gate also explains what is missing. Adrian Goldsworthy and Barry Strauss turn up on
these shows too, but the books Open Library returns for them are Caesar, Augustus and Pax
Romana for one and Ten Caesars, The Spartacus War and The Death of Caesar for the other;
Rome, not Greece, so neither has a book on this page.
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