A History of Greece

Embark on a journey into a world at once intimately familiar and endlessly strange-the world of ancient Greece. This history navigates the profound contradictions of a civilization that bequeathed to us the very language of politics, philosophy, and art, yet was built on slavery and driven by near-constant warfare. From the sun-scorched peninsula and its scattered islands, discover a people who spoke of Herculean tasks and Achilles' heels, who consulted rambling oracles before battle, and whose stories of gods and heroes were woven into the very fabric of their past. This is the story of a civilization of dazzling brilliance and shocking brutality, whose legacy is inextricably tied to our own.

This comprehensive history charts a sweeping course from the mist-shrouded palaces of the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age to the dawn of the Hellenic world. It chronicles the emergence of the fiercely independent city-state, the polis, and explores the divergent paths of its two greatest rivals: the open, commercial, and democratic society of Athens, and the rigid, militaristic, and oligarchic garrison-state of Sparta. Follow the great wave of colonization that spread Greek culture across the Mediterranean and witness the social and military upheavals that challenged the old aristocratic order and set the stage for the classical golden age.

At the heart of the narrative lies the dramatic arc of the fifth century BCE. Witness the defining moment of Hellenic unity in the heroic defiance against the might of the Persian Empire at Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis. Explore the subsequent Golden Age of Athens under the leadership of Pericles, an unparalleled cultural explosion that saw the construction of the Parthenon, the birth of tragedy and comedy on the stage, and the revolutionary inquiries of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This era of supreme confidence, however, gives way to the tragedy of the Peloponnesian War, a ruinous and self-destructive civil war that pitted Greek against Greek and brought the golden age to a bloody and exhausting end.

The story does not conclude with the fall of Athens. It follows the decline of the city-states and the inexorable rise of a new power on the Greek periphery: the kingdom of Macedon. Experience the forging of a revolutionary new army under the brilliant and ruthless Philip II, and ride with his son, Alexander the Great, on his world-altering conquest of the vast Persian Empire. The narrative continues into the vibrant, cosmopolitan Hellenistic Age that followed, a world of successor kingdoms, immense new cities like Alexandria, and groundbreaking scientific discovery. The journey ends as it must, with the coming of a new, formidable power from the west, tracing the series of conflicts that led to the Roman conquest and the final extinguishment of Greek political independence.