Brief Lives of the Ancient World: Rulers, Rebels, Robbers

by Guy de la Bédoyère

A fascinating window into the history of the ancient world, told through thirty-five fascinating figuresThe western ancient world stretched from the Pillars of Hercules between Spain and North Africa in the west to Mesopotamia in the east, and from southern Egypt in the south to Scotland in the north. In between all the places and across several thousand years came a succession of grand civilizations and cultures―including the Sumerians, ancient Egypt, Carthage, classical Greece, the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire.

In this engaging account, Guy de la Bédoyère draws on decades of research to provide a history of the ancient world through a personal selection of key figures. The story of any one of these lives is unique, from Egypt’s reforming pharaoh Horemheb or the public priestess Eumachia at Pompeii. These individuals serve as a portal into the experience of the ancient world in the days of despotic pharaohs and Roman emperors and make it possible for us to try and imagine what their lives were like.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 27, 2026

About the author

Guy de la Bédoyère is author of a widely admired series of books on Roman history. He appeared regularly on the UK’s Channel 4 archaeology series Time Team and is well known in the United States for his volume The Romans for Dummies. His latest books are Gladius. Living, Fighting, and Dying in the Roman Army (2020), and Pharaohs of the Sun. How Egypt's Despots and Dreamers Drove the Rise and Fall of Tutankhamun's Dynasty (2022). He lives in Grantham, Lincolnshire, UK.

Reviews

[Sarah Kimberley]

The latest addition to my Ancient bookshelf and I’m glad I picked this up. Us that are passionate about the early periods know all about Emperors, Empresses and conquerers who emerged across the western world. They swept in and out of antiquity, their names moving fortunes across the Mediterranean. This book focuses on individual personalities from ancient Greece and Rome, some we have heard of and some perhaps not.

Those who lived alongside the millions of forgotten souls on the edges of the known earth. Making their mark and leaving behind stories inherited by historians today. Stories I myself are personally interested in. I really wish we had more ordinary, everyday people peppered throughout but that’s okay as our knowledge of these people is limited.

Brief Lives Of The Ancient World summons people from the Pyramid Age to the glittering Roman Empire that eventually receded into dust and misfortune. Sometimes these people can feel quite mythic and distant, but actually they are the reason classical civilisation even existed. While we sadly can’t possibly uncover the experiences and existences of an entire populace, Guy de la Bédoyère does a fab job of bringing some of the more intriguing faces to our immediate attention. He brings in "nameless" individuals who left behind faint footprints as well as a Pompeiian Priestess (Eumachia I love you!) an Egyptian architect in Saqqara, early tomb raiders and a dream interpreter to name a few.

My only criticism is that there are quite a few familiar names evoked in this book, but I’ve really enjoyed delving into the fabric of these different lives connected by brief and brilliant threads over three millennia. Women quite surprisingly, take up a lot of the research too.

They breathed, they ate, they thought, they slept, they moved. Some were absolute legends and some were just despots clinging onto the same fragile hopes. The Ancient people, in all their colourful array, lived in a time where fate was a fickle deity. It still very much is for a lot of us today and we remain largely unchanged. I love that their stories portray actual living behind all of the illusions 🏛️🏺