Roman historical fiction

The following books are recommended works of fiction with a main setting of either Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece.

1. The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane
The Forgotten Legion Chronicles: Book 1
Score: 101
Our rating: 9.0 | 11 positive reader reviews
Romulus and Fabiola are twins, born into slavery after their mother is raped by a drunken nobleman on his way home from a good night out. At 13 years old, they and their mother are sold: Romulus to gladiator school, Fabiola into prostitution, where she will catch the eye of one of the most powerf [...]

2. Praetorian by Simon Scarrow
The Eagle Series: Book 11
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
AD 51. Legionaries Cato and Macro have forged a bond that has survived war, rebellion and torture. Yet nothing has prepared them for a daunting mission on the deadliest battlefield of all: the bloody streets of Rome.Traitors are threatening to plunge the Empire into bloody chaos and no one [...]

3. Lion of Macedon by David Gemmell
Score: 91
Our rating: 8.8 | 3 positive reader reviews
Over and again, the aged seeress Tamis scried all the possible tomorrows. In every one, dark forces threatened Greece; terrible evil was poised to reenter the world. The future held only one hope: a half-caste Spartan boy, Parmenion. So Tamis made it her mission to see that Parmenion would before [...]

4. The Eye of Re by Patricia L ONeill
The Hatshepsut Trilogy: Book 3
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The female Pharaoh Hatshepsut has crushed a bloody rebellion, but she invoked the treacherous god Seth to annihilate her enemies. Now he is devouring her soul. But she needs Seth's power even more to defeat the warlords of Canaan and Syria, who have vowed to destroy the woman who dares rule o [...]

5. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki an [...]

6. Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Score: 89
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father. He is shocked to find there the mistress's rival and successor, Mrs. Ota, and that the ceremony has been awkwardly arranged for him to meet his potential future bride. But he is most shocked to be drawn into a relatio [...]

7. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
Score: 88
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field [...]

8. Her Majesty the King by Patricia L ONeill
The Hatshepsut Trilogy: Book 1
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Hatshepsut, the gifted and beautiful daughter of the Pharaoh, vows to accept whatever destiny the gods have decreed for her. When just fourteen, she kills a marauder, is betrothed to her loathsome brother and becomes the most powerful priestess in Egypt. She falls in love with Senenmut, the brill [...]

9. The Silver Eagle by Ben Kane
The Forgotten Legion Chronicles: Book 2
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The Forgotten Legion – ten thousand legionnaires made captive by the Parthians – has marched to Margiana on the edge of the known world. In the midst are Romulus, Brennus and Tarquinius, all men with good reason to hate Rome. Together the trio must face the savage tribes which constan [...]

10. The Horus Throne by Patricia L ONeill
The Hatshepsut Trilogy: Book 2
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
In The Horus Throne, the second book of the Hatshepsut Trilogy, author Patricia L O'Neill traces the evolution of Egypt's legendary female Pharaoh through the formative years of her reign. Meticulously reconstructing the historical event, she reveals a leader torn apart by the conflicting [...]

11. The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
Nefertiti: Book 1
Score: 82
Our rating: 8.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
In ancient Egypt, a forgotten princess must overcome her family’s past, and remake history.The winds of change are blowing through Thebes. A devastating palace fire has killed the 18th dynasty’s royal family - all with the exception of Nefertari, niece of the reviled former que [...]

12. Fire in the East by Harry Sidebottom
Warrior of Rome: Book 1
Score: 80
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
In the autumn of AD255 a Roman officer, Marcus Clodius Ballista, is sent east to defend the city of Arete on the Euphrates from attack by the Sassanid Persians, the religious fundamentalists who are the Fire in the East. From the start the mission is ill-omened. For nothing is as it seems in the [...]

13. Caligula by Douglas Jackson
Roman Trilogy: Book 1
Score: 72
Our rating: 7.1 | 1 positive reader reviews
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the third Roman Emperor, is better known by another name: Caligula, a name synonymous with decadence, cruelty and madness.Rufus, a young slave, grows up far from the corruption of the imperial court. His master is a trainer of animals for the gladia [...]

14. The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis
Falco: The New Generation #1
Score: 40
Our rating: 4.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
First of a new series of crime novels set in Ancient Rome and featuring Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of much-loved Marcus Didius Falco. Based on real historical events: mysterious poisonings, in which victims died, often unaware they had been attacked. Albia is now 28 and an established fem [...]