This is going to be a widely personal opinion from person to person, so I will give you what I enjoy. I would state looking into some of the Greek and Roman historians. For first person accounts you would want to look into Livy for the Romans and Herodotus for the Greeks. I am not trying to dissuade you from looking into the other cultures, in fact I encourage it. These writers, however, are some good ones that will give you some wide spread feels of the period, albeit they are bias.

I will make the obligatory statement that these are simply where I, personally would point someone. Other people will have their own personal choices and will have their own historians to reference.