Ancient Rome and Latin Literature Reading List in English Translation - Compiled by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Ancient Roman Civilization and Latin Literature Reading List in English Translation - Compiled by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Understanding ancient Roman society and civilization is important in the United States, because our government institutions are based on those of Republican Rome and not Imperial Rome.  

Latin schools are often located in large cities in the US as training grounds for future lawyers.  They all have mock jury as a club and US government study clubs like Close-Up, which is sponsored by the US Congress.

The ancient Romans produced much literature about administering and maintaining good government, legal rhetoric, science, plays, and literature.

Reviews and interpretations of these books can be found on library literature databases, publisher’s websites (Oxford University Press notably), and Goodreads (an Amazon subsidiary company).

I put together a list of books on ancient Roman Civilization below that is divided into the following categories in no particular order of preference:

History:

-The Rise of Rome by Livy

-Agricola and Germania by Tacitus

-The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius

-The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar

-The War with Hannibal by Livy

-The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives by Plutarch

-Histories by Tacitus

-Makers of Rome: Nine Lives – Coriolanus, Fabius Maximus, Marcellus, Cato the Elder, Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Sertorious, Brutus, Marc Anthony, and Julius Caesar by Plutarch

-The Early History of Rome by Livy

-The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius

-The Rise and Fall of Athens (Theseus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicius, Alcibiades, and Lysander) by Plutarch

-The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives: (Agesilaus, Pelopidas, Dion, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Phocion, Alexander, Demetriusm, and Pyrrhus) by Plutarch

-On Sparta by Plutarch

-The Life of Alexander the Great by Plutarch

-The Annals of Ancient Rome by Tacitus

-The Civil Wars by Appian

-The Civil War by Gaius Julius Caesar

-The Later Roman Empire by Ammanius Marcellinus

-The Essential Writings of Flavius Josephus

-The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus by Cassius Dio

-The Letters of the Younger Pliny by Pliny the Younger

Literature and Mythology

-Metamorphoses by Ovid

-Odes by Horace

-Georgics by Virgil

-The Complete Poems by Catallus

-The Sixteen Satires by Juvenal

-The Comedies: Volume 1 – 4 by Plautus

-The Biographies of Hercules, Troades, Phoenissue, Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Thyestes, Hercules, Oetaneus, Fabula Praetesta by Seneca

-The Aeneid by Virgil

-Theogeny – Works and Days by Hesiod

-The Library of Greek Mythology by Appollodorus

Rhetoric and Law

-Selected Works by Cicero

-On Obligations by Cicero

-Murder Trials by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Science and Philosophy

-Natural History by Pliny

-Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

-On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius

-Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

-The Niomachean Ethics by Aristotle

-Selected Political Speeches by Cicero

-Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

-The Satyricon by Petronius

-The Essential Writings by Epictetus

-On the Republic – On the Laws by Cicero

Happy Reading!!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Amboise Chateau (Loire Valley, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Amboise Château (Loire Valley, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The British always reserve ahead for tour buses of at least 30 to go around visiting châteaux along the Loire River in summer.  If you do not have a reservation in July for a tour bus, it is almost impossible to buy tickets for a small group. 

With no tour buses available, Laurent and my American family drove to Amboise in stick-shift cars as a bachelor-bachelorette party.  It was stop-and-go all the way there, but we finally made it.

Amboise dominates a rock outcropping on the right bank of the Loire.  It has high walls that tower over the Loire River; during one of many religious wars, Protestants hung from the walls of Amboise as trophies.

The round towers are large enough for horses to trot up four abreast to the garden esplanade.  A king could ride in his covered carriage up to safety from trouble in town below easily this way.

We took a tour in French that our bilingual wedding attendees had to translate for the rest of us.  Defenders of Amboise have been fighting off intruders at this spot since the 11^th century during the 100 Years’ War with England.

Charles VIII defended the Loire Valley less and invaded Italy more during the Italian Wars in the 15^th century.

Charles VIII discovered the luxurious Italian lifestyle and brought back Italian furniture for his castles as well as Italian architects, sculptors, and gardeners.

The flame-styled Gothic windows line up in one wing against the rectangular Renaissance windows in another.

“That would be a great photograph to show the difference between those two styles,” I said in my nascent reviewer’s eyes.

Leonardo da Vinci is buried at Amboise.  The Valois King Francis the First brought him to Amboise to paint, put on parties, and build war machines as da Vinci did for Ludovico Sforza of Milan. 

At one time, there was a restaurant in a half-timbered home in Old Town Tours called the Leonardo da Vinci that had models of his war machines dangling from the ceiling.  The restaurant was Italian with the Milanese specialty of risotto on the menu.

Leonardo da Vinci’s home, the Clos Lucé, is located at the foot of Amboise with its own museum containing the artist’s notebooks that he wrote in reverse script that he could read in a mirror.  (Industrial espionage prevention tactic in the Renaissance?)

I studied art history in high school and at the University of Chicago, which enabled me to identify and compare styles without textbooks at Amboise. 

I thanked all my dignified professors at the University of Chicago, whom I thought were a little stodgy in their suits, ties, and pocket hankies for their hideously grueling essay exams, so I could be my own tour guide in France, if needed.

Essay questions like “Discuss the Development of Plurifacial Sculpture in Renaissance Italy using at least 10 Sculptures as Examples with Complete Identification” and “Compare and Contrast 15^th Century Italian Renaissance Painting in Florence, Sienna, Venice, and Rome using at least 5 Works from each City” explain why I spent hours memorizing art works in the art library and described all my professors as sort of “evil in a good way” over pizza.  They wanted to keep little undergraduates like me in their graduate courses occupied in wholesome pursuits.

Those art history tests had three essay questions and usually 30 identification questions, which required identification slides, design and composition analysis, and significance of the work of art in its social and historical context.  You had to do this in about three or four paragraphs.

Fast writing and thinking were a by-product of this testing.

I was having fun at my wedding, and it had not even started yet.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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Visiting the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Tours (France - Loire Valley) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Musée des Beaux Arts in Tours (France - Loire Valley) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Despite a late night out watching Bastille Day fireworks on the banks of the Loire River in downtown Tours (France), Laurent and I woke up early to see the Musée des Beaux Arts.

I loved art history and wanted to understand French better.  The small Musée des Beaux Arts did not disappoint with its art work that covered all the major events in the Bible and with representative works from all periods that were important to the history of Tours.

The Museum itself is housed in the 17^th and 18^th century archbishop’s palace.  It was full of Mille Fleur (1000 Flowers) tapestries, which were woven in the Touraine at one time.  You need very clean water to weave tapestries like this.

There was furniture from what I loosely term the “First Renaissance” when Charles VIII saw what kinds of furniture the Italians had.  Some Italian furniture was brought back to France and then copied.  It is a little heavier than what the French produced on their own.

The most famous painting in the museum is by Rembrandt and entitled The Flight into Egypt by the Holy Family.

Our visit to the Musée des Beaux Arts was short, but merited a detour as the Michelin Green Touring Guide said.  The Musée des Beaux Arts is located by a park and bakery, so you can mix croissants, culture, and coffee before you visit.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Home of Rabelais in Chinon (Loire Valley France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Home of Rabelais in Chinon (Loire Valley France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I had to go to the family church outside Tours from Nantes to go over wedding homily details and give the priest a copy of our pre-Cana workshop papers from Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.

On the way to Tours, we stopped for a picnic lunch at the site of Rabelais’s home called La Devinière.  Rabelais was a 16^th century writer from the Touraine region, who was most famous for writing the books Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Rabelais is noted for being a transitional writer between the Medieval and Renaissance eras.  His books describe obsolete and new tools that make his works difficult to read in the original French.

A white château with a white wall all around it rose in the vast green plain.  The 15^th century château called the Château du Coudry – Montpensier had treetops peeking out over the surrounding wall.

When we tried to visit it, we found out that it was a private residence.  The home of Rabelais was also closed.

No matter.  We set out our picnic lunch out on the plain where only our car was visible and ate our lunch.  You could hear birds singing in the trees behind us.

I wanted to stay all day and sleep by a haystack with no worries about “industrial time.”  I learned that in Medieval Society peasants and royalty alike measured time by sun up and sun down and the seasons in my social sciences course entitled Self, Culture, and Society at the University of Chicago.

(See the historical sociology book Montaillou by Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie about the Albigensien Crusade in France that was tried in Carcassonne in the French Languedoc region for more information.)

From La Devinière, we drove past cave homes along the right bank of the Loire River.  Red geranium-filled flower boxes decorated the windows.

“We call those cave homes ‘troglodyte homes,’” Laurent said.

“They must be great for wine storage,” I remarked.

“You can also rent them for vacations,” Laurent said.

Chinon has a lovely, light-bodied red wine that goes well with vegetable or langoustine (crayfish) terrines (that you can slice and put on toast) or patés (that you can spread on toast).

I wanted to visit every flower-filled town that we passed by on the way to celebrating our church wedding in “The Garden of France” as the Touraine region is referred to in France.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Reviewing the Republican Guard from Fouquet's Glassed-In Terrace (Paris) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Reviewing the Republican Guard from Fouquet’s Glassed-in Terrace (Paris) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I first moved to France, I lived outside of Nantes, the capital of Brittany, with my husband’s family.  After my honeymoon, I began looking for a job and learned how to do French-language cover letters (handwritten) and resumes.

I was finally invited in to do skills testing and do interviews in Paris after six months of looking for a job.  After discovering that the French keyboard is different from the English one for skills testing, I walked down Avenue George V to assuage my wounds. 

I knew I was going to have to practice typing for a few hours a day to get my French typing speed increased to the same speed as my English one.

I sat in the glassed-in terrace at Fouquet’s and ordered a French grilled cheese sandwich, which comes with ham called a croque monsieur – “die mister” sandwich.  They are delicious, but you cannot eat too many.

If you add an over-easy egg to a croque monsieur sandwich and béchamel sauce, you get a “croque madame” sandwich – “die lady” sandwich.  These are delicious, too, but you cannot eat too many either.

Both of these sandwiches feature bread that has been fried on both sides with butter giving the sandwich a crunchy bite despite béchamel sauce on the croque madame, for example.

As I was eating, I heard a rhythmic “clip, clop” outside and turned my head around to see the mounted Garde Républicaine with horses and soldiers dressed in black and red uniforms go by. 

The mounted horsemen surrounded the Socialist President of France François Mitterand and Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who rode in a gold and black carriage down Avenue George V to the Champs-Elysées.

From my privileged seat on Fouquet’s glassed-in terrace, I felt as if I were being personally welcomed to France by President Mitterand as I ate a “croque monsieur” sandwich and drank an Orangina, a lightly carbonated French orange soda.

I liked Fouquet’s and ordered a café crème, not a cappuccino, but a coffee with about 1/3 cup of warm cream added to it. The French do not really want to admit that they make this item, because it is so fattening. 

I ate food like this in Paris during the winter at bistros, when it rains and is generally crappy weather to warm me up for Métro rides home to the 10^th arrondisement when I finally found a job.  (The French have great umbrellas due to their winter rainstorms; most will not bend in the wind.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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