Wanting to learn more about Ancient/Classical history, advice?

[KnightOfCydonia]

First off I love this mod as it helped increase my love of history especially learning about this period, while being incredibly fun and informative !

Well its like the title says I do enjoy learning about history alot especially this period but I mostly just know either what I was taught in school (which isnt much) or saw on the History Channel (which I assume is mostly accurate but I guess that would be hard to be sure of, since many times I have no idea how to check their sources).

I've read bits of a few books but there is a whole lot of them, so I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on where to start to get into this particular time period.

[Mediolanicus]

Look for relatively popular books to start out with. Tom Holland, Adrian Goldsworthy,...
(a good novel realistic Roman setting about Roman politics would be the books of Robert Harris about Cicero - Imperium and Lustrum)

After that you can go on to the more specialized works. You can take a look at this thread on the .org for some titles.
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...t=bibliography

[Dienices]

I have had to come up with my own reading list for AS Ancient History, it is based on 1st century Rome B.C. and the Hellenistic world:

Rubicon - Tom Holland
From the Gracchi to Nero - H. H. Scullard
The Dream of Rome - Boris Johnson
Imperium, Lustrum - Robert Harris
Catiline's War - Sallust
Thundering Zeus - Frank Holt
From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellenistic World - M. Grant

I am about half way through this list at the moment, and I am enjoying all those which I have read. I hope you find this helpful.

Dienices

[FAB0L0US]

Just go straight to the source. Plutarch is highly recommended and easy to read.

[KnightOfCydonia]

Alright sweet thanks for the help guys