Here are 91 books that Legion XXII fans have personally recommended if you like
Legion XXII.
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While I hold a Ph.D. in mass communication, my second love has always been history, especially Roman history. Perhaps it is because I’m of Italian heritage. In fact, my grandfather’s hometown, Chiusano di San Domenico, is the site of an early Roman conquest when the Latin states were developing into a power in central Italy. I genuinely admire the Roman genius in engineering, military, political, and social organization. I have traveled extensively throughout Europe and have visited many Roman historical sites in Italy, France, Hungary, and Great Britain. The Romans continue to fascinate me and always will.
I thoroughly enjoyed this gripping tale of war, whose central plot features individual heroism and the clash of civilizations. Faustus Valerianus is a legionary caught between two worlds: his mother's native Britannia and his father's Roman heritage. Valerianus is a complex character I won't soon forget. Following the death of his parents, he chooses to serve Rome under the eagles.
As legionary, he marches north with Agricola's Roman army to complete the conquest of Britannia. In a climactic battle, the Romans are victorious, and our hero is blooded and hardened into a warrior. He must now face the challenge of negotiating two worlds and threats from within and without. Hunter paints an entertaining introduction to the Roman world of conquest and the Britons' heroic efforts to keep their freedom.
Will Britain take him in... or mark him as its enemy?'A brilliantly realised world of Imperial ambition and native resistance' Simon Scarrow'Wonderful, distinct characters ... this is a terrific read' Conn Iggulden
Faustus Valerianus is the son of a Roman father and a British mother, a captive sold among the spoils after Claudius's invasion.
Now both parents have died within a month of each other, and so he sells the family farm and enlists, joining legendary general Agricola's campaign to conquer the entirety of the British Isles culminating in a devastating battle amongst Caledonia's dark mountains.
In the first century, Rome’s celebrated love poet Ovid finds himself in exile, courtesy of an irate Emperor, in the far-flung town of Tomis. Appalled at being banished to a barbarous region at the very edge of the Empire, Ovid soon discovers that he has a far more urgent -…
While I hold a Ph.D. in mass communication, my second love has always been history, especially Roman history. Perhaps it is because I’m of Italian heritage. In fact, my grandfather’s hometown, Chiusano di San Domenico, is the site of an early Roman conquest when the Latin states were developing into a power in central Italy. I genuinely admire the Roman genius in engineering, military, political, and social organization. I have traveled extensively throughout Europe and have visited many Roman historical sites in Italy, France, Hungary, and Great Britain. The Romans continue to fascinate me and always will.
In this no-retreat, no-surrender epic, I became captivated by the exploits of the First Nervana, an auxiliary cohort of the Roman army occupying Britain in 139 CE. I enjoy books whose characters appeal to me. I found myself rooting for the tribune Lucius Faenius Felix and his friend Cai Martis, prefect of cavalry. However, I admit to empathizing with the Britons fighting for their people and freedom.
Ultimately, Britons seeking Roman blood and an end to Roman rule surround our heroes and the First Nervana. Under siege, the First must hold until relieved—but can they? With plenty of blood, gore, intrigue, and romance, I found this epic tale a pleasurable read that caused me to ask for more of Lucius and Cai.
"An excellent, exciting debut. Gripping, gritty and blood-spattered. Fans of Roman historical adventure will love it!" Matthew Harffy
AD 139.
Lucius Faenius Felix arrives in Britannia to command the First Nervana, a renowned cohort drawn from the homelands of the fierce Nervii tribe. The soldier has been recently cheated out of his ancestral estates - and is still grieving from the mysterious murder of his father.
Along with Cai Martis, a veteran cavalry Prefect, the young officer uncovers news of a conspiracy. The resurgent Novantae, a ferocious tribe led by the determined war-chief, Barra, aim to put the Romans to…
While I hold a Ph.D. in mass communication, my second love has always been history, especially Roman history. Perhaps it is because I’m of Italian heritage. In fact, my grandfather’s hometown, Chiusano di San Domenico, is the site of an early Roman conquest when the Latin states were developing into a power in central Italy. I genuinely admire the Roman genius in engineering, military, political, and social organization. I have traveled extensively throughout Europe and have visited many Roman historical sites in Italy, France, Hungary, and Great Britain. The Romans continue to fascinate me and always will.
Another rip-roaring Roman adventure in Britannia with more bodies piling up than at a supermarket check-out line. Good fun, exciting characters, and a good look at the early years of Rome as it morphed from a Republic to an Empire. Julius Quintus Quirinius is a young man caught in Rome's civil war. With both parents recently deceased, he has few options. He must either serve under the eagles or face a life of slavery.
Following six months of arduous training, his cohort is sent south, where it suffers a humiliating defeat and is punished with decimation—the execution of one of every tenth man in each unit. The man chosen from his unit for execution asks Quintus to take care of his family back in Rome. With the remaining legionaries of his cohort, he heads south to defeat the tribesmen that had inflicted such a devastating defeat upon them. He shows…
The first book in a thrilling series of adventures set in Ancient Rome! For fans of Ben Kane, Conn Iggulden, Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow.
Death by your comrades’ hands…
17 BC
Julius Quintus Quirinius, like many citizens in the years after Rome’s civil wars, must volunteer with the Roman army or be sold into slavery.
Keen to prove his worth, he becomes a member of the IXth Legion, but after only six months his cohort suffer a brutal defeat, the result of stupidity and cowardice.
Cowardice in a legionary carries a heavy punishment: the sentence of decimation - to…
Who was the man who would become Caesar's lieutenant, Brutus' rival, Cleopatra's lover, and Octavian's enemy?
When his stepfather is executed for his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Mark Antony and his family are disgraced. His adolescence is marked by scandal and mischief, his love affairs are fleeting, and yet,…
While I hold a Ph.D. in mass communication, my second love has always been history, especially Roman history. Perhaps it is because I’m of Italian heritage. In fact, my grandfather’s hometown, Chiusano di San Domenico, is the site of an early Roman conquest when the Latin states were developing into a power in central Italy. I genuinely admire the Roman genius in engineering, military, political, and social organization. I have traveled extensively throughout Europe and have visited many Roman historical sites in Italy, France, Hungary, and Great Britain. The Romans continue to fascinate me and always will.
If I didn't know better, I would think the author was on hallucinogens when he began this series. It is a real hoot! While it follows the adventures of a Centurion, Ben Stiger, in a strange and bizarre world, it veers off into mysticism, magic, fantasy, witchcraft, the supernatural, and just about any other genre you care to name. Stiger is a brave, resourceful, and brilliant leader who has been given command of a company of misfits.
He must hone them into a first-rate combat unit as he attempts to quell a rebellion threatening the existence of the Empire he loves and serves. He journeys through another dimension of space and time with his two companions, an elf and a priest. Weird and engrossing. It is a book you'll pick up and not put down.
A tarnished legacy. A dangerous mission. The beginning of an epic destiny…
Nobleman and born soldier Ben Stiger never backs down from a fight. Even as the son of an infamous imperial general, an outcast from society, he refuses to crumble under the unforgiving shadow of his once-powerful family’s disgrace. When he’s reassigned from his crack company to the struggling southern army, he’s eager to help turn the tide against a growing, deadly rebellion.
Supported by his faithful lieutenant, Eli, one of the last remaining elven rangers, and a holy Paladin on a quest for the High Father, Stiger fights…
Life has shown me that it’s the hard times that matter, that shape you as a person. My thirst for history and my urge to write stories compel me to write and read about the days of the crumbling Roman Empire – surely one of history’s hardest periods. To the Romans and those who depended on them, it must have seemed like the end of days. It was an age of big changes that would have forged strong characters.
The end of the Empire has had me gripped since I was a boy.
Eagle in the Snow catapults you right into the dying state and right to its edge. I found myself walking the imperial borders in snowbound Germania, wondering if and when the Roman world was about to collapse beneath my feet.
It is one of those novels that leaves you feeling like you’ve lived another life, and that feeling has stayed with me ever since. A magical piece of historical fiction.
A novel about General Maximus, one of the inspirations behind Ridley Scott's massively successful film GLADIATOR.
'Behind me I left my youth, my middle age, my wife and my happiness. I was a general now and I had only defeat or victory to look forward to. There was no middle way any longer, and I did not care.'
In the year AD 406 Rome was on the defensive everywhere, and a single Roman legion stood desperate guard on the Empire's Rhine frontier. Maximus, the legion's commander, is urged to proclaim himself emperor, but he stands by his concept of duty…
I’m a writer and educator working in central Virginia, and I’ve been in love with the ancient world since my first Latin class back in the seventh grade. I’ve always been interested in social history more than just the chronology of battles and the deeds of famous men, so my research looks for sources that can illuminate daily life and the viewpoints of marginalized populations. I hold a BA in English and History from the College of William and Mary and an MLitt from Mary Baldwin University.
This book provides an exemplary hour-by-hour guide to what life was like for a citizen of Rome at the height of its power. I love that Angela not only gives us the high-society angle, bringing us into the lush gardens and sumptuous homes of Rome’s wealthy and powerful, but also the crowded apartments and streets that were home to the vast majority of the ancient city’s citizens. You walk alongside them, getting a ground-level view of the patterns of a normal day in all its mundane details, from clothing to food to labor to entertainment, rendered in fascinating prose.
The wondrous extravagance of banquets where flamingos are roasted whole and wine flows like rivers. The roar of frenzied spectators inside the Colosseum during a battle between gladiators. A crowd of onlookers gathered at a slave auction. The silent baths and the boisterous taverns...Many books have dealt with the history of ancient Rome, but none has been able to so engage its readers in the daily life of the Imperial capital.
This extraordinary armchair tour, guided by Alberto Angela with the charm of a born storyteller, lasts twenty-four hours, beginning at dawn on an ordinary day in the year 115…
I am a historian and history teacher in Ohio with a passion for studying the endlessly fascinating Roman Republic. It was a time when many believed the gods walked the earth, when legend and reality mixed. The resulting stories lure us with their strangeness while reminding us of our modern world. For me, no topic in the Republic captures this paradox of strangeness and familiarity more than the political systems of the Republic. Our very ideas about representative democracy come from the Romans. But the legacy is deeper. In Roman politicians’ thirst for votes and victory, their bitter rivalries we can, perhaps, see the dangers of excessive political competition today.
Dynasty is just a good historical read, one I enjoyed thoroughly. This is the place to go for a readable researched, thoroughly engaging story of the final collapse of the Republic under Caesar and how his heirs ushered in a new political system. The pivotal period where Octavian, adopted son of murdered Gaius Julius Caesar, survived in a cutthroat political and military arena and made himself Princeps, the first emperor, is just fascinating. The subsequent men and women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and all of their political, and sometimes murderous, machinations come to life under Holland’s pen. An excellent choice for navigating imperial politics, often family politics.
'This is a wonderful, surging narrative - a brilliant and meticulous synthesis of the ancient sources . . . This is a story that should be read by anyone interested in history, politics or human nature - and it has never been better told' - Boris Johnson, Mail on Sunday
Rome was first ruled by kings, then became a republic. But in the end, after conquering the world, the Republic collapsed. Rome was drowned in blood. So terrible were the civil wars that the Roman people finally came to welcome the rule of an autocrat who could give them peace.…
I am an archaeologist and ancient historian, originally from Canada but living in London in the UK. I teach and write and excavate the ancient world and have worked both in the Mediterranean in Italy and North Africa and in the ancient near east, in Iran, and in Oman. I try to understand how the ancient world worked, both the history and the material culture, and how much it impacts us still today. Hannibal was such a crucial figure in this world just as it was forming, and he was from Africa, was Carthaginian, and we have lost so much knowledge of him and his culture.
This is a great read on the way that Rome became an empire. It puts the whole story of the city of Rome and what it developed into (i.e. the biggest power of the ancient world and a paradigm for many empires that followed) into context and into the history of the Mediterranean world. The book is so useful to read because it is well written and contemporary, but it also helps us to understand Hannibal. This is because Rome's version of Carthage and Hannibal is the only version that we have to deal with, Hannibal in many ways becomes a reflection of Roman ideas of their own imperialism.
Rome in the archaic age was a minor satellite between the Etruscan and Greek world. This book traces the expansion of Roman influence first within Italy, then around the Mediterranean world and finally, at breakneck speed, deep into Europe, out to the Atlantic, along the edge of the Sahara and down the Red Sea. But there had been other empires that had expanded rapidily: what made Rome remarkable was that it managed to sustain its position for so long. Rome's Fall poses less of a mystery than its survival. Understanding how this happens involves understanding the building blocks of imperial…
Sheila Finch is best known as a Nebula-winning author of science fiction, but on a visit back to her first alma mater in Chichester, UK, she encountered a mystery that wouldn’t let her go. Who built the nearby magnificent Roman palace that was just now being excavated at Fishbourne, and why? Months of research later, she came up with a possible explanation that involved a sixteen-year-old Roman mother, a middle-aged Celtic king of a small tribe, and Emperor Nero’s secret plans:
A historical novel has to do more than just re-tell a part of history. The author has the duty to make history come alive for the reader, even if fictionalized. That means details about daily life and customs, not just buildings and battles. This book was enormously helpful in describing everyday Roman life. What the Romans were eating and wearing in Rome, they probably also ate (as near as they could) and wore in their colonies. Here I found everything from going to the barber to going to the circus.
This classic book brings to life imperial Rome as it was during the second century A.D., the time of Trajan and Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus. It was a period marked by lavish displays of wealth, a dazzling cultural mix, and the advent of Christianity. The splendor and squalor of the city, the spectacles, and the day's routines are reconstructed from an immense fund of archaeological evidence and from vivid descriptions by ancient poets, satirists, letter-writers, and novelists-from Petronius to Pliny the Younger. In a new Introduction, the eminent classicist Mary Beard appraises the book's enduring-and sometimes surprising-influence and its…
Charles M. Odahl earned a doctorate in Ancient and Medieval History and
Classical Languages at the University of California, San Diego, with an
emphasis on Roman imperial and early Christian studies. He has spent his
life and career traveling, living, and researching at sites relevant to his
interests, especially in Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey Israel, Egypt, and
Tunisia. He has taught at universities in Britain, France, Idaho, and Oregon, and
published 5 books and 50 articles and reviews on Roman and early Christian topics.
Dr. Crawford, a specialist in ancient history and religion, offers a detailed and readable account of the life and reign of Constantine's longest surviving son and successor in the mid-4th century (A.D. 324-361). Often criticized by ancient sources and modern scholars alike for not being as great a soldier as his father and for favoring Arian-leaning bishops, the author tries to rehabilitate the reputation of Constantius as a capable ruler in difficult times.
The reign of Constantius II has been overshadowed by that of his titanic father, Constantine the Great, and his cousin and successor, the pagan Julian. However, as Peter Crawford shows, Constantius deserves to be remembered as a very capable ruler in dangerous, tumultuous times. When Constantine I died in in 337, the twenty-year-old Constantius and his two brothers, Constans and Constantine II, all recieved the title of Augustus to reign as equal co-emperors. In 340, however, Constantine II was killed in a fraternal civil war with Constans. The two remaining brothers shared the Empire for the next ten years, with…
