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	Ancient Greece: The Pocket Essential Guide By: Paine, Mike Published By: Pocket Essentials ePub for Digital Editions Price: $19.99 PDF for Digital Editions Price: $19.99 Mobipocket Reader Price: $19.99 Microsoft Reader Price: $19.99 PDF for Digital EditionsePub for Digital EditionsMobipocket ReaderMicrosoft Reader	EBOOK OPTIONS ADD TO CART ADD TO WISHLIST TELL A FRIEND RECEIVE ALERTS
	Western civilization began with the Greeks. From the highpoint of the 5th century BC through the cultural triumphs of the Alexandrian era to their impact on the developing Roman empire, the Greeks shaped the philosophy, art, architecture and literature of the Mediterranean world. Beginning with the Homeric period, once believed to be a realm of myth, Mike Paine takes the reader on a journey through twelve centuries and more of Greek culture. He shows what archaeologists have revealed of the Trojan Wars and Mycenae, outlines the glories of Athens at its height and provides a gripping narrative of the struggle between the Greeks and the mighty Persian empire. The careers of great political and military leaders like Pericles and Alexander the Great are highlighted and the importance of the great philosophers like Plato and Aristotle is demonstrated. Dramatists and demagogues, stoics and epicureans, aristocrats and helots all take their place in the unfolding story of the Greek achievement.

Excerpt

Today the country of Greece consists of the mainly mountainous land that forms the end of the Balkan peninsula and the numerous islands that lie in the Aegean Sea to its east, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Roughly comparable in size to England its glories similarly lie in the past. Civilisation reached it first from the south, before radiating northwards – and thus the great cultures and civilisations that dominate its past follow roughly this same path north. It borders Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia to the north – the latter representing part of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, an entity divided between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia at the end of the Balkan Wars (1912–13). From Macedonian Greece, the Balkan peninsula narrows, heading southeast, until we come across many of the famous classical settlements, from Thebes to Athens.To the southwest, connected to the mainland by a thin strip of land called the Isthmus of Corinth (named after the city at its southern end) is the Peloponnese, with Arcadia at its centre and Sparta to the south. Beyond this are the many islands, over 2,000 of them, that make up nearly 20% of the country. The Ionian Islands to the west include Ithaca, famed in antiquity as the home of Odysseus. In the southern Aegean are the Cyclades, some thirty islands, among them Delos and Naxos, whose prehistory saw a culture characterised today by mysterious sculptures of elegant, folded-arm nudes. Beyond them, towards the Turkish coast, are the Dodecanese whose largest isle, Rhodes, was famed for one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the Colossus. Further north along the Turkish coast are Samos, Chios and Lesbos – the latter home to the most famous female poet of classical times, Sappho. At the very southern end of the Aegean lies the largest of the Greek islands, Crete, home to the first true Greek civilisation in the second millennium before the birth of Christ. Ancient Greece, however, extended further than this. First to be colonised at some point in prehistory was the western coast of Turkey. During the eighth century BC, colonies were founded along the southern Turkish coast and the Levant, and also in Sicily. The seventh and sixth centuries saw the time of greatest expansion.The Black Sea was ringed by Greek settlements; towns sprung up scattered across the Southern Italian littoral. Southern France, Corsica, Egypt, Libya, even Southern Spain close to the Straits of Gibraltar saw settlement by the Greeks. The history of Ancient Greece at it simplest breaks down into three periods. In the first period, the story is of the great and mysterious civilisations that preceded Classical Greek society, the Minoans and the Mycenaeans. After their collapse and the subsequent Dark Age that followed comes the second period in which Greece follows a path that eventually leads to it enjoying the status of the most important cultural, military and political force among the countries bordering the Mediterranean at that time. The third period is the story of the Hellenistic Age, a time of new empires frequently in conflict with each other until their eventual conquest by the expanding Roman Empire. The story of the Ancient Greeks does not quite end there. As servants of Rome, their influence upon their rulers, socially and culturally, was as strong as it was when they were independent. Rome may have won the final military victory but it may not have won the cultural war.

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Related Subjects

• History > Ancient > Greece
• History > Ancient
• History > Greece
• Folklore & Mythology
• History

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