Might be a little past your timeline, but the Henryk Sienkiewicz books on Eastern Europe might chew up some of your time. "The Deluge" and "With Fire and Sword" are probably too new (1600s), but "Teutonic Knights" might interest. He also wrote "Quo Vadis", which takes place in Nero's time. Translated from Polish, but he won the Nobel Prize for literature, so it can't be that bad.