The story of Cyrus from youth the kingship and conquest of the Persian Empire and ultimate death. It was first published in 1960, and reissued in the 70’s. As explained above Lamb was one of Cecile B DeMille’s favorite authors of historical fiction. He wrote the script of The Life, Loves and Adventures of Omar Khayyam directed by William Dieterle in 1957.

William Golding: The Hot Gates

Tells the story of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae opposing 300 Spartans lead by King Leonidas against the massive Army of King Xerxes 1st of Persia. The Battle was decisive for the ultimate victory of Greece over Persia although the 300 Spartans were to be killed to the last. It was to be remembered as The Battle for the West ( See other novels on the same battle below).

Gore Vidal: Creation

Published in the 1980’s Creation was the very first novel to seriously question Herodotus’ depiction of the Persian Greek Wars. Dedicated to Unhappy Iran and equally unhappy Afghanistan Vidal praises ancient Persian civilization in an epic novel that was also an attempt to explain the philosophical and political rivalries of the ancient World. Written during America’s  Reagan years when the Western World was yet to see the downfall of the Soviet Union, Creation appears as a metaphor for the moral and political challenges in our modern times. A strong advocate and supporter of the American Democrat Party, Gore Vidal’s novel was an immediate and surprising international best seller. Vidal’s depiction of ancient Persian customs and history was based on meticulous historical research but remained controversial as most of Vidal’s work in exploring sexual behavior in the ancient world such as his True or False assessments that Persian nobility indulged incest and that bisexual relationships were tolerated if not encouraged as in Greece. But Creation offers in contrast to most Western literature in regard to Persia a favorable account on Persian civilization and social and political organization at the time of King Xerxes 1^st.  

The plot of his novel is as follows:

In 445 BC Cyrus Spitama, the Persian ambassador to Athens, hears Herodotus reading from his 'Histories' and in response recounts to his nephew Democritus the story of his life. He has served three Persian kings and traveled to India and China; himself the grandson of Zoroaster, he has met Buddha, Gosala, Lao Tse and Confucius! This is the thesis of Creation, a historical novel which geographically spans most of the fifth century civilized world and intellectually engages with an immense range of ideas about the fundamental nature of creation.

While it's probably impossible to avoid shallowness in presenting complex philosophical and religious systems in a novel, Vidal does a surprisingly good job of it: if you don't know anything about Buddhism or Confucianism or Taoism, then you could learn quite a bit about them from Creation. Although religious and philosophical ideas are at the core of Creation, they are never allowed to overpower the novel. There is plenty of historical (and particularly political) interest — poisonings in the Persian harem, the internecine feuds of the Greeks, the warring states of India and China. Much of this will be best appreciated by those who already have some knowledge of the history, but it isn't assumed.

Tom Holland: Persian Fire

Tom Holland is an acclaimed British author. He has written many books, both fiction and non-fiction, on many subjects from vampires to history. He has adapted Herodotus, Homer, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio 4. His novels, including Attis and Deliver Us From Evil, mostly have a supernatural and horror element as well as being set in the past. His earlier book Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic offers great insight into the early years of the Roman Republic and Julius Caesar’s Coup and overthrow of the Republic by crossing the Rubicon. In Persian Fire Tom Holland's non-fiction but - inevitably - slightly fictionalized account of what the Greeks called 'the Median things' (they were incapable of distinguishing the Medes from their southern Iranian cousins and vanquishers) is the first in English addressed to a general readership for more than 30 years. In it, Holland crosses his own Rubicon, from Roman history to Greek, but not only Greek by any means. One of the book's many attractions is the care lavished on trying to get under the skin of the Persians, especially those of the imperial court and wielding the highest military commands. Indeed, as the title is surely meant to suggest, he - like the professional ancient historian George Cawkwell in The Greek Wars (2004) - wants us to see the wars from the Persian just as much as the Greek side. Special attention is paid to the Persians' religion, one that lives on in the modern world from Mumbai to Vancouver in the observances of the Parsis (whose name betrays their ethnic origin). Holland emphasizes the causal, motive force of royal Persian opposition to the Lie. Xerxes's invasion of Greece should not for obvious reasons be called a crusade. But there was about it something of the same spirit that animated the anathema on all daivas (demons) that Xerxes delivered in a famous trilingual text - Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian - found at his chief ceremonial capital. This magnificent site the Greeks later called Persepolis; the name that has stuck to this day, thanks not least to Alexander the Great's symbolically definitive destruction of it in 330. The big trouble for Xerxes was that his monotheist Mazdean zeal was met with an equal and opposite force from his polytheistic Greek enemies.  Holland does Thermopylae full justice within the broader scope of his account, which also treats expansively the other major conflicts at Artemisium, Plataea and Mycale. Throughout, the reader's attention is caught by sparkling insight and no less sparkling writing. Nor does Holland fail to rise to the seriousness and vastness of his East-West theme. If you read nothing else, do read the Preface, which succeeds in its aim of building a bridge between the worlds of academic and general readers. Indeed, one of the most astonishing aspects of the author's achievement here, as in Rubicon, is that this is a book written by someone trained neither in the (Greek and Latin) classics nor even in history, let alone Oriental Studies.

Barry Strauss: The Battle of Salamis

Building a strong and compelling picture of an event in the distant past, of the forces that drove its occurence and of the people that lived through it is not an easy task. Historians as a breed seem often narrow, didactic and detail-obsessed, taking the most fascinating moments and devolving them down to dry and dusty factual points, sending another generation of students drifting into the land of Nod in the back rows of the lecture hall. The Battle of Salamis is not that type of history book. Barry Strauss has penned a superlative and riveting account of the epic naval battle of Salamis in 480 BC between the Greeks, led by the fledgling democracy of Athens and the canny, manipulative and vain Themistocles, and the overwhelming Persian forces of Xerxes. Strauss vividly portrays the key individuals, events and circumstances, drawing on chronicles of both participants such as Aeschylus, and the later accounts of 'the first historian' Herodotus, among others. The result is an amazingly readable account of the battle, the ships (triremes), the tactics (drawing the enemy into enclosed waters where speed and manuverability mattered more than size...and ramming, lots of ramming), and the long-term impact of the battle through the history of the western world (Greek victory at Salamis = success for democracy). Strauss has mastered the ability to give the reader a feel for the action, normally the strict purview of fiction writers, illustrating the event beyond just bare facts. In his words you can taste the woodsmoke and sweat, feel the thick knot of fear in the rowers stomachs and hear the creak of the oars and the thunderous crescendo of splintering wood before the rams. Overall Strauss has written a crackling good history that is well worth your time.

Michael Curtis Ford: The Ten Thousand

When Darius II, King of Persia, died and was succeeded by his brother Artaxerxes, Darius's son, Cyrus the Younger, collected a force of 100,000 Persians and 13,000 Greek mercenaries, mainly Spartans, and marched on Artaxerxes's stronghold in an attempt to win the throne for himself. In 401 B.C.E., the armies of Cyrus met those of Artaxerxes in battle at Cunaxa, near the Euphrates River. After Cyrus was gruesomely killed in battle, the Greeks wanted nothing more than to return to their beloved homeland. Without the provisions needed to return by way of the desert over which they had come, they struggled 1000 miles through Kurdistan and over the Armenian mountains in the dead of winter until finally reaching the Black Sea. Along the way, the 'Ten Thousand' were decimated by hostile forces, starvation, frostbite, and disease. Based primarily on the writings of Xenophon, a junior officer who assumed command of the Spartan forces after most of the senior officers were treacherously slaughtered, this novel retains much of the flavor of the soldier's memoirs. Ford, a Romance linguistics scholar, combines historical accuracy with eloquent storytelling to create an epic story that will capture the imagination of anyone interested in the history of ancient Greece and Persia. Michael Curtis Ford is also author of the Last King chronicling the feats of Mithridates Eupator VI, last King of Pontus (a region of Asia Minor), Ford captures the Roman first century B.C. from a novel perspective, viewing it through the prism of one of Rome's most formidable enemies. (stay tuned for Part II)