Fiction
George Recommends
How long have you got? Oh. I'll try to keep it short, then.
I LOVE Robert Harris's Cicero trilogy. Captures many sides to the central character and threads a lot of history intricately into the kind of page-turners that keep you from putting the light out.
Lewis Grassic-Gibbon's Spartacus is as elegantly-written as you could hope for.
Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series are so detailed and engrossing that you start to believe the world you actually live in is a fantasy, a diversion from the reality of living in the chaos of Rome.
Miri Recommends
How about...
Margaret Attwood's Penelopiad
Peter Ackroyd's Fall of Troy
Natalie Haynes's Children of Jocasta (or anything by her, actually)
Robert Graves's I, Claudius, obv
Enemies at Home by Lindsey Davis
Phyllis T. Smith's I Am Livia
Any of Steven Saylor's novels - all very good
Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine
Neither George or I are particularly into the more military-themed novels out there (you know, the kind that tend to be called things like "Eagles in the Thunder", "Eagles at Dawn" "The Blade of the Eagle", "Wrath of the Eagle"; that sort of thing) many of which might grab your interest. Just not our bag.