Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© EdSITEment, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
As the Persian Empire’s grip tightened by land and sea, it fell to one man to unite Greece in a last desperate bid to break it.
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© Suzanne Knight, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
The blessing of trade free from political interference was one of most important insights in British, indeed world history.
© Gobbler, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Horatius Cocles was the last man standing between Rome’s republic and the return of totalitarian government in 509 BC.
The people of Rome suddenly turned their back on centuries of ‘sport’ - all because of one harmless old man.
© Sylvia Duckworth, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
The Roman Emperor Honorius, so the story goes, had more on his mind than the impending sack of one of Europe’s iconic cities.
By TL. From Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Free Art Licence.
Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with nearly 50,000 men and 38 elephants is the stuff of legend.