This book provides a concise, illustrated introduction to the history of modern Greece, with a new final chapter about Greek history and politics to the present day. 56 illustrations. 10 maps.

A Political, Social, and Cultural History is a comprehensive and balanced history, covering the political, military, social, cultural, and economic history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Era.

"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

Grote's History of Greece is one of the classic works of historical interpretation and scholarship. George Grote - banker, MP and a founder of London University - was the first historian to give a high value to the Greek creation of democracy, and this aspect of his work is closely relevant to current debates about democracy in our times. This abridgement of the original twelve volume work, which was made in the early years of the century and published by George Routledge and sons, is now available again and makes accessible the essential Grote. In a new and original introduction, based on the latest research into Grote and into Greek history, Paul Cartledge places Grote's history in its intellectual context, discusses its salient features and traces its subsequent reception over the past century and a half.

A fascinating, accessible, and up-to-date history of the Ancient Greeks. Covering the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, and centred around the disunity of the Greeks, their underlying cultural unity, and their eventual political unification.

"First edition 1996. Updated in 2000 with new suggested readings and illustrations"--Title page verso.

Thoroughly updated and revised, the second edition of this successful and widely praised textbook offers an account of the ‘classical’ period of Greek history, from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Two important new chapters have been added, covering life and culture in the classical Greek world Features new pedagogical tools, including textboxes, and a comprehensive chronological table of the West, mainland Greece, and the Aegean Enlarged and additional maps and illustrative material Covers the history of an important period, including: the flourishing of democracy in Athens; the Peloponnesian war, and the conquests of Alexander the Great Focuses on the evidence for the period, and how the evidence is to be interpreted

The story of the ancient Greeks is one of the most improbable success stories in world history. A small group of people inhabiting a country poor in resources and divided into hundreds of quarreling states created one of the most remarkable civilizations ever. Comprehensive and balanced, A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture, Second Edition is a shorter version of the authors' highly successful Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History, Second Edition (OUP, 2008). Four leading authorities on the classical world offer a lively and up-to-date account of Greek civilization and history in all its complexity and variety, covering the entire period from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Era, and integrating the most recent research in archaeology, comparative anthropology, and social history. They show how the early Greeks borrowed from their neighbors but eventually developed a distinctive culture all their own, one that was marked by astonishing creativity, versatility, and resilience. Using physical evidence from archaeology, the written testimony of literary texts and inscriptions, and anthropological models based on comparative studies, this compact volume provides an account of the Greek world that is thoughtful and sophisticated yet accessible to students and general readers with little or no knowledge of Greece.

The book takes us on a tour through the rich spectrum of Greek life and culture, from their epic and lyric poetry, political thought and philosophy, to their social life, military traditions, sport, and religious festivals, and finally to the early stages of Greek democracy. Running as a connecting thread throughout is a people's attempt to create a society based upon the concept of freedom rather than naked power.