This useful companion to classical history reveals the ancient world, from Scotland to India and from Spain to the Black Sea, through the numerous sites of its history and legends. Covering nations, provinces, cities, towns, rivers, seas, straits, mountains, plains, and battle sites, the author describes about 900 historically significant places in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The Book of the Ancient World is an account of our common heritage from the dawn of civilization to the coming of the Greeks. It is the story of how human beings began their great adventure of learning how to live; of how they have sought to satisfy the practical needs of their bodies, the questioning of their minds, and the searching of their spirits. To this end it subordinates details of political events to the record of things that lie at the foundation or our modern civilization. Dorothy Mills had an uncanny and unique ability to write history that is interesting and at the same time based on sound scholarship. Her direct, engaging approach is valued increasingly by the many parents in our day who are looking for reliable materials for home study, as well as by many private school educators. The highly-prized six volumes of her historical works (see below) have become very scarce on the used book market, and so Dawn Chorus has undertaken to reprint them as part of its effort to offer texts ideally suited to the needs of a new generation of teachers and students. In a world where the quality of education has so deteriorated, may the reissue of this wonderful historical series shine as a beacon to a new generation of young (and not so young) scholars . Dawn Chorus publishes these five other books by Dorothy Mills: The Book of the Ancient Greeks; The Book of the Ancient Romans; The People of Ancient Israel; The Middle Ages; and Renaissance and Reformation Times. Dawn Chorus has also republished another outstanding, and long-out-of-print historical series perfectly suited for home or school use (and highly recommended in home-school curricula), entitled The Picturesque Tale of Progress, by Olive Beaupre Miller. It is available in large format (9 volumes), or smaller, double-bound format (5 volumes).

This groundbreaking, first basic reference work on ancient religious beliefs collects and organizes available information on ten ancient cultures and traditions, including Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, and offers an expansive, comparative perspective on each one.

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This old-fashioned narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.

The great civilizations of the distant past never cease to impress us with their spectacular achievements. Ideas, writings, and works of art speak to us across tracts of time with an amazing freshness of imagination and workmanship. This book presents a vivid, multi-faceted portrait of these achievements, set within their historical context and embracing a global coverage, which includes ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China and Pre-Columbian America. The Ancient World is the most accessible guide yet produced to the spiritual, cultural, technological, and artistic innovation that was a hallmark of these complex and fascinating societies. Organized chronologically, the text places special emphasis on the evidence still remaining. Detailed coverage is given to symbols, sacred texts, religious ceremonies, gods and goddesses, visions of the cosmos, and sacred sites - from the temple of Karnak and the Valley of the Kings to the sweeping majesty of the Great Wall of China. Sample entries include: Sumer and Akkad - the first civilizations along the Indus Valley of Mesopotamia; Egypt - from the pre-dynastic 'Scorpion King' to the Old Kingdom Pyramid Age to the glories of the New Kingdom; Minoan/Mycenean civilization - the first city states; the legend of Atlantis; Roman Republic - rise of Rome; wars with Carthage; golden age of the Republic; Parthian Empire - the Hellenistic counterweight to Roman expansion in the East; Qin Dynasty - unification of China and beginning of Imperial China; Mahajanapadas - the 'Great Kingdoms' of India; Inca Empire, Machu Picchu, El Dorado.

No less than their modern counterparts, ancient genres were contested, hybrid and ambiguous. This volume, the result of a conference at the University of Sydney, is a collection dealing with some of the many issues around ancient understandings of genre. It presents a series of case studies, some concerned with texts that have loomed large in discussions of ancient genre (such as the works of Ovid), and others, in particular late-antique works, that have received less attention. Ranging from Rome and Greece to Gaza and Syria, Approaches to Genre in the Ancient World makes a unique contribution to the study of ancient genre and to the understanding of the specific texts discussed.