Mary Beard recommends Homer:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/books/review/mary-beard-by-the-book-interview.html
What books got you interested in Ancient Rome and the classics?
The first was Moses Finley’s “The World of Odysseus.” I had read quite a bit of Homer’s “Odyssey” at high school (some in Greek, but mostly in English!); but it was Finley’s book that made me see that you could think about the “Odyssey” historically and that there were big historical questions about what kind of society was being depicted, and whether it ever existed. . . .
For readers new to the classics, what books make the best entree to the great works of antiquity?
Always start with Homer’s “Odyssey.” It is such a foundational text for so much of the rest of the Western cultural tradition, while at the same time questioning that tradition before it was born. It raises big issues about what we think “civilization” is, the long history of turning our enemies into “barbarians” and why it might be “us” who are the barbarians, not “them.” No wonder it has been so important for writers and artists such as Derek Walcott and Romare Bearden.