One of the most widely read books in modern times is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. The popular self-help work offers advice on how to manage people and bring them around to your way of thinking. The influential figures of ancient history had no such manual to guide them, especially those leaders who ruled the world’s earliest civilizations. They had to learn on the job. What worked for an innovative female pharaoh in Egypt was not necessarily the secret to success for the first Roman emperor or a groundbreaking Chinese philosopher.

Patricia S. Daniels. The most influential figures of ancient history.

National Geographic, Washington D.C., p.5,2016 (adapted).