A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century
By John Burrow
Allen Lane £25; 553 pages
FT bookshop price: £20

The greatest military power in the world had a problem. A distant city had begun acting independently. How was it to be punished? The military power was Athens, the city was the long-forgotten Mytilene, but the words that the popular leader Cleon proclaimed in Athens, calling for the upstart’s destruction, were ones that Messrs Cheney and Bush would take heart from today.