A new selection from the national epic of India Originally composed in Sanskrit sometime between 400 BC and 400 AD, The Mahabharata-with one hundred thousand stanzas of verse-is one of the longest poems in existence. At the heart of the...

Since his death in the third century BC, each age has woven its own legends around the figure of Alexander the Great. If the Hebrew tradition saw him as a preacher and prophet, to the Persians he was alternately a true king and an...