In a recent student survey, Amplus beats Cassius!

[_Simon Belmont]

This survey was performed with 500 students, chosen at random from each institution, by an independent survey company. The results, my friends, speak for themselves!

[Guest]

Hey Kishkumen, I'm looking for a good survey of Classical History that is not a text book. Any ideas?

EDIT: I had to ask, Amplus U lacks in solid Classical education that Might C.U. gets many of their students in her library, so my interest has been peaked in the subject.

EDIT x2: The survey takers were also there!

[_Kishkumen]

This survey was performed with 500 students, chosen at random from each institution, by an independent survey company. The results, my friends, speak for themselves!*

*This "survey" was performed by Fox News pollsters at 5am after Greek Rush Week wrap-up parties involving lots of alcohol and drugs. Questioned by Cassius faculty after the pollsters left, Cassius students reported that they thought that they were being asked whether their sex partner had the amplest bosom and/or penis or they wanted to see him/her in a casket. Given the problematic method involved in collecting the survey data, Cassius contests the results as dubious, a problem not uncommon with Fox News pollsters.

[_Simon Belmont]

Hey Kishkumen, I'm looking for a good survey of Classical History that is not a text book. Any ideas?

Yeah, start your own thread.

[_Simon Belmont]

*This "survey" was performed by Fox News pollsters at 5am after Greek Rush Week wrap-up parties involving lots of alcohol and drugs. Questioned by Cassius faculty after the pollsters left, Cassius students reported that they thought that they were being asked whether their sex partner had the amplest bosom and/or penis or they wanted to see him/her in a casket. Given the problematic method involved in collecting the survey data, Cassius contests the results as dubious, a problem not uncommon with Fox News pollsters.

Aww, you're just upset because you are part of a second-rate institution.

[_Kishkumen]

Hey Kishkumen, I'm looking for a good survey of Classical History that is not a text book. Any ideas?

Hey, Stak. There are interesting books covering various periods, but I don't know of a single book covering all of Greek and Roman history that is not a textbook. Unfortunately, I don't read many popular histories. I would recommend books like The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece by Victor Davis Hansen or an ancient work like Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Peter Brown's biography of St. Augustine is also a good read. Kagan's multi-volume history of the Peloponnesian War is another good one, although one can't go wrong by reading Thucydides himself. For pleasant prose, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is, of course, a classic in its own right, but don't expect anything like accuracy in the details. Syme's Roman Revolution is also well written and more up to date than Gibbon by far, but the mass of detail can sometimes be overwhelming.

Paul Cartledge, a very kindly English scholar, wrote a short history of the Spartans that one can pick up at many of the big booksellers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I haven't read it yet, but it is a fun subject by a good scholar working in his area of particular expertise. To date I have only read some of his more scholarly work on the subject.

[_sock puppet]

*This "survey" was performed by Fox News pollsters at 5am after Greek Rush Week wrap-up parties involving lots of alcohol and drugs. Questioned by Cassius faculty after the pollsters left, Cassius students reported that they thought that they were being asked whether their sex partner had the amplest bosom and/or penis or they wanted to see him/her in a casket. Given the problematic method involved in collecting the survey data, Cassius contests the results as dubious, a problem not uncommon with Fox News pollsters.

Aww, you're just upset because you are part of a second-rate institution.

Simon, obviously your envy/jealousy is a many-splendored thing!

[_Kishkumen]

Aww, you're just upset because you are part of a second-rate institution.

You're just sore because, although you came along to the student survey, no amount of alcohol or drugs you tried to ply the students with could woo them into your creepy pedo-van.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Hey, Stak. There are interesting books covering various periods, but I don't know of a single book covering all of Greek and Roman history that is not a textbook. Unfortunately, I don't read many popular histories.

Thanks for the suggestions. I wanna just get a grip on the timeline and major events from those periods, and look for the source of influences that lingered on into Europe. Nietzsche and company are so so steeped int he classics I feel like I'm missing out on something.

I wonder if just reading primary texts would give me what I'm looking for.

[_Blixa]

More thumbs up for Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars. I never tire of it. I suppose I only really know Roman history and mostly via the books I had to study in Latin: "histories" like Livy (fun though!) and Caesar's commentaries and Tacitus. I've of course read Gibbon as a part of a "great works" curriculum, and while worthwhile in many respects may not be what you are looking for. Other than textbooks, I think you're left with historical novels which might actually fill in some interesting periods for you and not be that remiss as histories. Kish and I will argue the merits of Robert Graves, I'm sure, but I don't know but what its not bad for a "feel" of the early Republic if overgiven to drama. And its been decades since I read Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March, but I think it portrays Catullus accurately (at least as I would want him to be).
I know everybody thinks Caligula is the fun emperor, but don't miss out on Tiberius. He's the reason I have to see Capri before I die (well, there are a couple more reasons, but..)...

What do you need the background for Stak?

Edited to add: just read your reply, Stak. Reading the originals and supplementing with excerpts from an anthology/textbook is what I recommend).