The History of Rome (five-book edition), by Theodor Mommsen, translated by William P. Dickson, is now on line. You can access it here at the moment.

Thanks to David Meadows and his wonderful weekly newsletter 'Explorator' for this information.

Mommsen was certainly a thorough historian, but I have to confess that his five volumes have stood on my bookshelves for many years, still unread. I think it's the style. Mommsen's emails would have brought up the message "This e-mail is rather big. Do you still want to send it?"

All the same, it's good to know that all that 19th century scholarship is only a couple of mouse-clicks away. He covers Roman history to the end of the Republic.

If you prefer Roman history as told to children, you might enjoy The Story of Rome by Mary Macgregor. I used to enjoy Mary MacGregor's versions of Greek myths.

The same web site, the Baldwin Project, has put on the web several classical biographies, such as this 1902 Life of Alexander. Before spending time chasing these up, you might care to sample the style, to see if this is what you can use:

They had then no printed books, but there were a few writings on parchment rolls which young scholars were taught to read. Some of these writings were treatises on philosophy, others were romantic histories, narrating the exploits of the heroes of those days—of course, with much exaggeration and embellishment. There were also some poems, still more romantic than the histories, though generally on the same themes. The greatest productions of this kind were the writings of Homer, an ancient poet who lived and wrote four or five hundred years before Alexander's day. The young Alexander was greatly delighted with Homer's tales. These tales are narrations of the exploits and adventures of certain great warriors at the siege of Troy—a siege which lasted ten years—and they are written with so much beauty and force, they contain such admirable delineations of character, and such graphic and vivid descriptions of romantic adventures, and picturesque and striking scenes, that they have been admired in every age by all who have learned to understand the language in which they are written. Alexander could understand them very easily, as they were written in his mother tongue.