In May 1781, a cantankerous John Adams, still smarting after his public falling-out with Benjamin Franklin and humiliating ejection from the French court, sat down to write a stern letter to his ...

The Roman historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus (fl., c. 86-35 BC) wrote three books. Two of these survive, short works on the conspiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine War. The third, titled simply ...

One Ancient Roman historian argued that republics need the fear of common enemies to prevent political factions from tearing the state apart. The clarity of Thucydides’s writing and the acuity of his ...