Ancient/Medieval Era Literature

I downloaded the works of Tacitus to my kindle for free. Reasonably easy reading.

St. Augustine's City of God is on my continuous reading list. You can't understand the history of the West without reading Augustine, and his learnedness is astounding.

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius is great. A book you slowly read. I haven't met many people who have read it but it used to be you were not considered educated unless you had read it.

I am also making my way through Gargantua and Pantagruel. A very strange book that makes me think that post-modernests have nothing on the breadth medieval mind.

Recently finished El Cid, an incomplete epic poem about the Spanish Knight.

Working my way through Egil's Saga, an Icelandic saga. Icelandic sagas are long and crammed full of details. You get halfway through the book before Egil even shows up.

Also went through Sir Orfeo recently, and reread parts of the Green Knight. Great poems.

I'm reading Herodous and Tales from Old Japan.

Recently bought, Rome and Her Empire - Barry Cunliffe, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery - Stephen Williams and Carausius and Allectus: The British Usurpers - P. J. Casey. I still have half a dozen Celtic books to 'get around to' on my shelf.

Not really read much of any of them so far, the Carausius and Allectus book has a surprising amount of coin info in it though, metal contents, find distributions etc. Most of my interest is focused around the Tetrarchy recently.

Good, specific books can be so expensive, even second hand bargains very rarely turn up. I'm looking out for Diocletian and the Tetrarchy - Rodger Rees and Constantine - Timothy Barnes but not seen either for less than £75, at the minute I can't justify that so I guess they will have to wait for a bit. I even have my eye on a couple of German language books about Diocletian but they are equally pricey and may be too much hard work for me to read.


BTW - ebay UK has a second hand copy of Diocletian and the Roman Recovery - Stephen Williams for sale at the minute for just over a fiver with free delivery. Pretty good price if any of the British bookworms are interested.


EDIT - Really!? The forum auto updates the text 'eBay.xx.xx' (UK address) to 'eBay.com', are you kidding me?!, WHY?!

Half way through Emperors of Rome, David Potter. Brilliant book, though I do keep getting side tracked by my Battlefield 4 game guide...

Not too bad at all Ben, I think mine was around the fifty quid mark. Later Roman Britain was a good read, tells you all about Provinces and about the defence against the barbarians and the arrival of the anglo saxons. Plenty of maps and pictures to keep the detector side of me happy too.

Last year I started reading Roman Conquests, which is a series of several titles covering the Roman Republican period put out by Pen & Sword (http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/). Since then I've bought around 50 or so additional titles from them on all areas of the Classical World. Most of the books are really very good, engaging and lively reads, and P&S keeps churning out more and more titles on Classical (and Medieval) history. I highly recommend them.

Best,
John