What did the Persians believe about the ancient Greeks? How does the Roman Empire compare with ancient China? Understanding the ancient world allows us to comprehend how our perceptions of it influence the way we see the world we live in today – from what constitutes significant art to how we perceive Islam…

Jerry Toner takes us through the bustling streets of Rome and Pompeii, where the stench of death is suffocating, danger lurks around every corner, and the sounds of commercial love, drunkenness, and songs are the chorus of food at night in the taverns.

He wonders what it was like to be an ordinary woman at that time and in what circumstances one would have to resort to magic. He presents the great variety of peoples who lived in different periods and places, from the Persians to the Germans.

He reaches as far as the periods after classical Athens and Rome, through the Hellenistic kingdoms that succeeded Alexander and the late Roman Empire, where Christianity prevailed. A Brief History of the Ancient World is a lively, subversive, and highly detailed guide to the peoples and cultures that shaped the way we live today.