by severa
A fragment of the Histories of Herodotus, from an ancient Egyptian papyrus
If you want to read about ancient history, your first instinct is probably to pick up a modern book about the subject. That's fine, but after a while you start to realize just how much modern history writing is basically the author's interpretation of a small handful of surviving texts. Going back to the original sources can be very enlightening as to how exactly we know what we know. It's not the only approach to history, but it is a good one.
When it comes to ancient Greece, it's easy to figure out who the most important surviving historians are, but it can be confusing to understand which other works to read and what goes when. Certainly it took me a while to figure it all out. So I thought it would be helpful to assemble a timeline that shows how all the surviving works of history from that time fit together. I'm not an expert, but I think I've managed to include pretty much everything of importance.
You don't need to read all of this in order - in fact you probably shouldn't. If you're getting into this for the first time and this list seems overwhelming, don't worry. You can just start with the basics and then fill in the gaps later. If you can only read two books, read Herodotus and Thucydides. If you can read two more books, read those and then move on to Xenophon's Hellenika, then Diodorus Siculus Books 16-20. These books alone will take you through the whole Classical Greek era, in an almost continuous narrative. And there are good editions of all four linked below.
When available, I would definitely recommend reading the Landmark translations. Preferably as real books, not e-books. They have great maps, copious footnotes, and very thorough appendices, all of which I found very helpful in getting my bearings. But you can also find free translations online of everything here.
***
I had two main criteria for inclusion in this list. First, is it a work of history or biography about ancient Greece that was written during the Classical period (including by Romans)? Second, is this work complete enough to be read as a continuous narrative? That is, I excluded works which only survive in fragments. Those fragments are historically important, but it's hard to just read them without context. I did, however, include some fragments of works that are largely but not totally complete.
The time period covered goes from the earliest surviving sources to about when the Greek king Pyrrhus went to Italy to fight Rome in 280 BC. There are still important sources for Greek history after this time, but I've included them on the timeline for Roman history instead, since after that point Greek and Roman history became more and more intertwined.
I did exclude a few works from this list. For example, Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers, since the history of philosophy is a bit too separate from everything else that's here.
Most works listed here cover a single time period and should be read as a single work, but there are a few, such as those of Diodorus Siculus and Justinus, that cover centuries of Mediterranean history, which I've therefore broken up by period. These works, which are essentially summaries of other, lost writings, aren't usually as important, but sometimes they cover crucial periods not discussed by our other surviving sources. In particular, Diodorus Siculus provides the only real account of the period before and after Alexander the Great.
A graphical timeline of the works featured below. Many dates are only approximate.
A bust of the Athenian lawgiver Solon
c. 600 BC - 500 BC
The first major work of history (and ethnography) in the Greek world, written to explain the causes of the massively important Greco-Persian Wars. My personal favorite of all of these. Always enjoyable, not always trustworthy, but this edition points out most of his errors, so it’s fine.
Although I split this work into two entries because of the length of time it covers, it should certainly be read as a single whole.
Diodorus Siculus was a Sicilian historian from the first century BC who wrote a monumental history of the Mediterranean, much of which survives. He has a mixed reputation among modern historians, some of whom think he did little but copy other sources without much understanding himself. Either way, his work covers some important periods we otherwise would have very little record of.
These first books of Diodorus aren't really history, however. They're more of a mix of mythology and ethnography. Probably the least read part of his work. I'm including them here mostly for the sake of completeness.
Note that books 6 through 10 of Diodorus have been lost except for fragments.
c. 630s BC - c. 500s BC
This work, either by Aristotle or a student of his, was lost for the better part of two millennia until a mostly intact manuscript was rediscovered in Egypt in 1879. As its title suggests, this is a work on the Athenian constitution. The first section, which is the one that concerns us here, describes the evolution and revolutions of that constitution from the 600s BC onwards. The second section describes the constitution as it existed in Aristotle's day, in the 320s or so.
The first part of the historical section details the back and forth struggle between oligarchy and democracy in the period leading up to the Persian Wars. It provides important background for the later history of Athens, which is not always clearly described by our other sources.
I would recommend reading the version I linked, rather than one of the copies floating around the internet, since the introductory material contains important background on how the work was composed and where the author may have erred.
Plutarch wrote a well known series of moralizing biographies called Parallel Lives, each comparing and contrasting the career of a famous Greek and a famous Roman. Although Plutarch can be too credulous when it comes to treating anecdotes as facts, at the very least his biographies give the history of Greece much more color than you get from the sometimes dry works of straight history.
These biographies don't quite fit in with the main story of Classical Greek history, but I'm including them for the sake of completeness, since Plutarch's other Greek lives are all here. Theseus and Lycurgus are mythological figures, and Solon is real but heavily mythologized, so take their biographies with grains of salt.
Translations of Plutarch's various biographies are spread out across various editions, not necessarily arranged in chronological order. However, I've linked a guide to which lives are in which volumes. Or if you want, you can just read them online.
Show Episodes (3 Total)
Although only some books of Diodorus survive in full, many of the others can be partially reconstructed through quotations and references by later authors. For the sake of completeness I have included these as well.
The Persian Empire had conquered part of the Greek speaking world (Greek cities on the west coast of Anatolia) in the middle of the sixth century, but the Persian Wars only began around 500, when those conquered cities revolted, eventually dragging the rest of Greece into a series of wars with Persia that almost got the whole region conquered. However Sparta and Athens led a coalition of Greek city-states that successfully repelled the Persian invasions, winning several famous victories.
499 BC - 479 BC
This half of the Histories covers the Persian Wars themselves, after a very long setup.
Our surviving copies of Diodorus resume at the start of Book 11, with the second Persian invasion of Greece.
501/0 BC - 481/0 BC
A short chapter mostly on the development of ostracism as a regular practice during the Persian Wars.
Show Episodes (2 Total)
Cornelius Nepos wrote a long set of brief biographies, but the only ones which survive are about two dozen lives of famous generals, mostly Greek. These biographies are quite short - often only a few paragraphs - and sometimes contain significant factual errors. For completionists and scholars only, especially when there's a Plutarch biography of the same person.
Note that in his biography of Miltiades, the author conflates two men of the same name, Miltiades the Elder, who founded a colony in Thrace, and his younger, much more famous relative who won the battle of Marathon.
Also note that every general here was at least partly responsible for a stunning victory against the Persians, and every one of them wound up in disgrace at some point afterwards.
Show Episodes (4 Total)
Prehistory - c. 480 BC
This work is basically a summary of a summary, Justinus was a Roman writer who wrote an epitome of a much longer universal history by a man named Pompeius Trogus. The original was lost but this summary happens to survive. The only particularly unique parts of this work are towards the end, since this is one of our few surviving histories of the post-Alexander the Great period.
The rest of the work is mostly just for completionists. It's kind of confusingly written even if you're familiar with the period. Be prepared to consult Wikipedia a lot. Even for the Hellenistic era, you might be better off just reading a modern history book (I recommend Alexander to Actium by Peter Green).
With the Persian Empire now on the defensive, the Greek cities pressed their advantage. However, the Spartans quickly withdrew from the alliance and so leadership passed to Athens. But within a few decades Athens successfully turned its allies into subjects and the alliance into an empire run for its own benefit.
480 BC - 431 BC
Our two main sources for early classical Greece are Herodotus and Thucydides, but there's a gap in between them which Thucydides covers only in passing. That gap is filled by this volume of Diodorus Siculus. I wouldn't say that this is essential reading, however.
Show Episodes (2 Total)
The two greatest city-states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, fought an almost three decade long war which was unprecedented in both scope and brutality in the Greek world.
c. 435 BC - 411 BC
His reputation is earned. Thucydides is clearly the smartest and most insightful of all these guys. And not as difficult as I’d feared. Unfortunately he died before finishing this work, and so it doesn't cover the last few years of the war.
411 BC - 403 BC
Xenophon, a cavalry officer from Athens, wrote this as a direct continuation of Thucydides’s history, finishing the Peloponnesian War and then covering the next few decades. Unfortunately Xenophon is not as good a historian as Thucydides and there are some significant gaps in what he chooses to cover, partly because of his pro-Spartan bias. Nevertheless, he’s the main surviving source for this period.
But note that the edition I've linked also contains selections from two other historians, Diodorus Siculus and an anonymous one whose work was rediscovered in Egypt, so you can compare and contrast their accounts, which I thought was great. They go a long way to countering some of Xenophon's omissions.
c. 429 BC - 404/3 BC
On the revolutions and coups which convulsed Athens in the final years of the Peloponnesian War and after.
The rest of this work from Chapter 42 onwards is about the state of the Athenian constitution in the 320s or so, which isn't strictly a work of history but may be of interest if you like looking at org charts.
Show Episodes (3 Total)
Show Episodes (3 Total)
At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta had successfully destroyed the Athenian Empire and become the hegemon of Greece. But this position was only ever tenuously held, and over the next few decades a series of smaller wars would chip away at their power, until its near total collapse at the hands of Thebes.
401 BC - 400 BC
This takes place exactly between books 2 and 3 of the Hellenika. Not really a history, more of a military memoir, covering a disastrous expedition of Greek mercenaries into Persia which Xenophon was a leader of. Not essential reading for the history of Greece overall, but an influential work itself.
401 BC - 362 BC
The rest of this work, which was probably written separately from books 1 and 2, covers Greek history from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Mantinea in 362, showing how Spartan hegemony over Greece was gradually eroded across several wars.
c. 442 BC - 358 BC
A short, laudatory biography of the Spartan king Agesilaus II. Xenophon was a good friend of the king's and wrote this as a tribute after his death. There's not much that's new here, and some of the material directly overlaps with what Xenophon wrote in the Hellenika.
Sadly, Plutarch's biography of Epaminondas, perhaps the most interesting figure of this era, is lost.
Plutarch's biography of Artaxerxes isn't technically part of his Parallel Lives series, and Artaxerxes isn't even Greek, he was Persian, but it obviously fits well here.
Show Episodes (3 Total)
Conon, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus were Athenian generals - the last great Athenian generals according to the author. Datames was a Persian general. Epaminondas and Pelopidas were the two Theban generals who smashed Spartan power. And Agesilaus was the king of Sparta who ruled during this entire period.
Show Episodes (8 Total)
Athens, Sparta and Thebes had all tried to become masters of Greece and all had ultimately failed, leaving an exhausted power vacuum waiting to be filled. Into the gap stepped Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, who took Macedonia from a teetering kingdom on the fringes of the Greek world to the greatest power in the region.
360 BC - 336 BC
This edition of Diodorus covers Greek history from about where Xenophon’s Hellenika ends until abruptly breaking off in 301 BC. Book 16 covers the life of Philip II, and is our main surviving source for his life. Later authors were sadly much less interested in the life of Philip than that of his son, although in my opinion Philip was at least as interesting.
These biographies aren't about Macedon, they're about two rulers of Syracuse who happened to be around at the same time.
Show Episodes (2 Total)
These biographies aren't about Macedon, they're about two rulers of Syracuse who happened to be around at the same time.
Show Episodes (2 Total)
Upon his father's death, Alexander took the Macedonian throne at age 20 and proceeded to conquer the entire Persian Empire before his untimely death at age 32.
336 BC - 323 BC
Generally considered the best surviving account of Alexander the Great, although I thought it was too narrowly focused on military matters and neglected politics, just like Xenophon (who Arrian modeled himself after). It’s helpful to read this in parallel with Book 17 of Diodorus Siculus which covers the same period with a broader focus.
325 BC
This is a short monograph complementing Arrian’s main work about Alexander. The first half is a description of India, the second half is about the return of Alexander’s navy from India to Mesopotamia, which occurred in parallel with Alexander's march back in the second half of Book 6 of the Campaigns. This work is short, but also inessential.
336 - 323 BC
Book 17 is considered a lesser source on Alexander than Arrian, but I found it useful to read them in parallel, since Diodorus has a wider focus than Arrian.
c. 334-321 BC
Perhaps the least well known of the ancient biographies of Alexander. I haven't read this one so I can't say how it compares to the others.
Plutarch's earlier Greek biographies tend to be scattered across different volumes, but thankfully this edition, called Hellenistic Lives, contains all of his remaining Greek biographies from Alexander to the end of Greek independence.
His account of Alexander's life is unfortunately hagiographic, but the other lives here are generally quite interesting.
Show Episodes (1 Total)
Josephus was a Jewish historian who lived during the early Roman Empire. He wrote two significant works about Jewish history, with an eye towards explaining his native culture to his Roman overlords after Rome had just crushed a Jewish rebellion in 66-74 AD, a war in which Josephus served on both sides.
This work, Antiquities of the Jews, is a comprehensive Jewish history, covering events all the way from the Book of Genesis down to Josephus's day. Most of that early history has nothing to do with ancient Greece of course, but in this section Alexander the Great is introduced, and from here on Jewish history came to be dominated first by Greeks and Macedonians, and later by Rome.
When Alexander died unexpectedly he left behind no strong heir, just an unborn child and a disabled half brother. His generals took charge of things but proved entirely incapable of keeping the peace. Within a year the empire collapsed into an on and off series of civil wars that would last the next forty years, until the empire was well and truly broken and the last of Alexander's successors went down fighting in their old age.
323 BC - 301 BC
The final surviving books of Diodorus, covering most of the wars of Alexander's Successors before breaking off in 301 BC just before the Battle of Ipsus. Essential reading, and often very exciting. Clearly he was working from good source material here.
323 BC - 281 BC
Appian was a historian who wrote primarily about Rome, but as part of his account of the Roman war with the Seleucid Empire (the Hellenistic kingdom in Persia/Mesopotamia), he included a brief account of the foundation of the Seleucids and their subsequent history. Not much to it, but it’s what we’ve got.
This section is mainly about the career of Seleucus I, the officer under Alexander who founded the dynasty.
These Lives can be divided into two groups:
First, Demosthenes and Phocion, two rival Athenian statesmen who lived under the shadow of Macedonian power.
Second, Eumenes and Demetrius I were generals who fought in the wake of Alexander's death. Eumenes started out as Alexander's secretary in fact, while Demetrius was the son of one of Alexander's generals, Antigonus I.
Show Episodes (4 Total)
On Kings is a very brief summary of the lives of several Persian and Greek kings who were also generals. Included for the sake of completeness.
Show Episodes (3 Total)
This brief chapter explains what happened to Judea after the death of Alexander.
Diodorus only exists in fragments from this point on, but the fragments that exist of this book finish out the time period in question. Note that Diodorus continues on past this point, but his focus shifts from the Greek world to Rome, and so the last fragments of his writing are on the Roman timeline instead.
323 BC - 272 BC
Here's where Justinus finally starts providing us with new information. His account continues the Wars of the Successors past where Diodorus breaks off, to the end of the wars and beyond.
Note that the Epitome continues on after this, including some more details about the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Achaean League. But from this point onward Rome becomes more important in the narrative, so the rest of Justinus's work will be included in the Roman history timeline.
Timeline updated: Dec. 20, 2024
ChronoDrome is copyrighted, probably
There is no complete history of archaic Greece (that is, Greece before the Persian Wars starting around 500 BC), but there are a number of later surviving sources which discuss the period.