The tales of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousands of years. But where did they originate? Esteemed classicist Robin Lane Fox draws on a lifetime’s knowledge of the ancient world, and on his own travels, to open up the age of Homer.

His acclaimed history explores how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering strange new sights – volcanic mountains, vaporous springs, huge prehistoric bones – and weaving them into the myths of gods, monsters and heroes that would become the cornerstone of Western civilization: the Odyssey and the Iliad.

‘A beautiful evocation of a tantalizing world … Travelling Heroes is a tour de force’
   Rowland Smith, Literary Review

‘Lyrical, passionate … his great gift is to make this long-ago world a vivid, extraordinary and sometimes frightening place … a wonderful story’
   Elizabeth Speller, Sunday Times

‘Original, daring and arguably life-enhancing … produced with a sweeping narrative flourish worthy of a cinematographer or screenwriter’
   Paul Cartledge, Independent

‘Lane Fox argues his case with tremendous style and verve … learned, and always lively’
   Mary Beard, Financial Times

Robin Lane Fox (b. 1946) is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a University Reader in Ancient History. His other books include The Classical World, Alexander the Great, Pagans and Christians and The Unauthorized Version. He was historical advisor to Oliver Stone on the making of Stone’s film Alexander, for which he waived all his fees on condition that he could take part in the cavalry charge against elephants which Stone staged in the Moroccan desert.

The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome dominated the world for centuries and continue to intrigue and enlighten us with their inventions, whether philosophy, politics, theatre, athletics, celebrity, science or the pleasures of horse racing. Robin Lane Fox’s spellbinding history, spans almost a thousand years of change from the foundation of the world’s first democracy in Athens to the Roman Republic and the Empire under Hadrian.

Bringing great figures such as Homer, Socrates, Cicero, Alexander, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Augustus and the first Christian martyrs to life, exploring freedom, justice and luxury, this wonderfully exciting tour brings the turbulent histories of Greece and Rome together in a masterly study.

‘Epic in the true sense’
   The Times Books of the Year

‘He writes supremely well … a keen eye for the telling detail and powerful example … the humanity of the exercise shines through … compulsory, and compulsive, reading’
    Peter Jones, Sunday Telegraph

Robin Lane Fox is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a University Reader in Ancient History. His other books include Alexander the Great, Pagans and Christians and The Unauthorized Version. He was historical advisor to Oliver Stone on the making of Stone’s film Alexander, for which he waived all his fees on condition that he could take part in the cavalry charge against elephants which Stone staged in the Moroccan desert.

The transition from pagan to Christian in the ancient Mediterranean world was a process whose effects we still live with today. How did this monumental conversion come about? How did Christianity compare and compete with the pagan gods in the Roman Empire? This scholarly work, from award-winning historian Robin Lane Fox, places Christians and pagans side by side in the context of civic life and contrasts their religious experiences, visions, cults and oracles.

Leading up to the time of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, the book aims to enlarge and confirm the value of contemporary evidence, some of which has only recently been discovered.

‘This brilliant book is a wholly unexpected and central contribution to its subject. What is more it is readable and rereadable, even gripping’
   Peter Levi, Spectator

‘Important and learned’
   Financial Times

‘A massive and humane study…On my shelf it will rest with pride between Edward Gibbon and Peter Brown’
   Telegraph

‘On the one hand a magisterial analysis and reconstruction of an apparently remote and alien society, on the other a detailed study of the single most significant process in our history’
   The Times

Robin Lane Fox (b. 1946) is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a University Reader in Ancient History. His other books include The Classical World, Alexander the Great, Pagans and Christians and The Unauthorized Version. He was historical advisor to Oliver Stone on the making of Stone’s film Alexander, for which he waived all his fees on condition that he could take part in the cavalry charge against elephants which Stone staged in the Moroccan desert.

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 BC aged thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India.

His achievements were unparalleled – he had excelled as leader to his men, founded eighteen new cities and stamped the face of Greek culture on the ancient East. The myth he created is as potent today as it was in the ancient world.

Combining historical scholarship and acute psychological insight, Alexander the Great brings this colossal figure vividly to life.

‘So enjoyable and well-written … Fox’s book became my main guide through Alexander’s amazing story’
   Oliver Stone, director of Alexander

‘I do not know which to admire most, his vast erudition or his imaginative grasp of so remote and complicated a period and such a complex personality’
   Cyril Connolly, Sunday Times

‘An achievement of Alexandrian proportions’
   New Statesman

Robin Lane Fox was the main historical advisor to Oliver Stone on his film Alexander, and took part in many of its most dramatic re-enactments. His books include The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome, The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer and Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine.