I chose Tim Cornell and John Matthews because this is one of the books I wish had been around for me to read when I first started studying in the late 70s. It’s incredibly accessible, very scholarly, very succinct and it’s got beautiful maps and pictures. I never realised until I read it how important geography is in shaping the classical world. 

In what sense?

If I give an example it’s probably easier. The Roman Social War was fought in the early first century BC. I knew a lot about it before I read this book, about its causes and its effects, but it had never really been brought home to me that it was in many ways a war of the people of the plains against the people of the mountains. Then, in the middle of this book, there is this wonderful map of Italy, with all the areas of the rebellion and which places revolted, and it suddenly just struck me that the heart of the rebellion was in the Apennine Mountains and it had never come home to me before. 

Is this a huge great big thing covering the whole period?

Well, it’s got a huge scope, from the founding of Rome to the fall of the Empire in the west in the fifth century, but somehow it sort of does it in a not-big-fat-frightening-book way. It actually just rattles along. I always recommend my students read it as their first book on ancient history before they come up to Oxford. 

What is enticing about it? 

What makes it so good is that it’s very readable and clear and yet it manages to be clear without dumbing down, and it manages to construct a popular history narrative underpinned by deep scholarship. It doesn’t just deal with political and military history. It deals with languages and artistic movements and things like that and it pulls them all together.

Tell me about a Roman artistic movement?

OK. Portrait sculpture. In the last century BC the rich upper-class senators decided, for some reason, that they wanted their portraits immortalised in stone looking incredibly old, ugly, care-worn, heavily-lined, warts, creases and all.

Why?

Good question. We don’t really know the answer, but probably they are making themselves look old and shattered because it’s something to do with the Roman concept of dignitas, and that comes with age. It’s also bound up with negotium, hard work in the cause of the Republic – ‘Here’s my public image – I’m not a Greek pretty boy. I’m a careworn figure and I’ve been out in the snow and sun and I’ve devoted my life to the republic so give me respect.’ 

Presumably women weren’t doing this?

No. Romans had a weird thing with this though. They liked to couple it up with Greek heroic sculpture. To our eyes this is ludicrous mismatching. The old wizened face slapped on top of the beautiful body of a man of about 20 – heavily ripped, heavily muscled.

How long did this movement last?

It actually never totally goes way. It’s the dominant one in the last century BC but they moved to a slightly more, not pretty boy, but idealised middle-aged standard portrait. Some do go for the youthful look, but even in the fourth century AD you do find Romans who like to show themselves in this way. Of course, they are also doing another thing at that point. They are saying: ‘I’m the sort of man who harks back to the free Republic, as well as being careworn man.’ 

Where are these things?

Everywhere.

Where’s my nearest one? 

Where are you?

North London.

British Museum. But outside Rome the best place to find them is actually Copenhagen. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. I went there almost by mistake and it’s an absolutely breathtaking collection. 

The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme. 

It’s about the fall of the Republic, the overthrow of the Republic and the re-establishment of the monarchy. It’s centred on the life and career of Octavian, who becomes the First Emperor Augustus. It’s a strange and distinctive book, self-consciously literary. Syme, who was something of an old poseur, said his main influence when writing the book was Stendhal, Le Rouge et Le Noir. He employs a method that scholars call prosopography, which is basically the study of marriage links between people, geographic origins of upper-class people, office holdings and stuff. From it he started making patterns of faction politics in the late Republic. It may not be right, but it almost reads like a novel and it’s absolutely fascinating. You get the feeling of going beneath the surface of the straightforward story of the great man Octavian, and you start wondering who the powerbrokers were, who were the behind-the-scenes men? Who were his backers and opponents? It’s a classic of modern scholarship and it’s also about the rise of fascism – he uses Octavian as an allegory of the rise of Mussolini. It’s an incredible book. Slightly daunting because it’s very long. I read it just before I did finals and I’m convinced I got a first in that paper because I’d just read that. It’s got a lovely literary style. As he got older his literary style became a parody of itself. It was always quite brief and Tacitean, but by the end of his life he was writing bizarre sentences like ‘But. Not to men of understanding.’ I’m a Roman historian and I’ve read his later books and thought: I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re arguing. 

Now we’ve got Enemies of the Roman Order. 

Written by Ramsey MacMullen, an American scholar and one of my heroes.