Product Description

A comprehensive view of the ancient Greek world, its history and its achievements. The legacy of the Hellenistic world is vast--it ranges from architecture to philosophy, literature, and the visual arts to military strategy and science. This authoritative study covers the period from the eighth century BC, which witnessed the emergence of the Greek city-states, to the conquests of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Greek monarchies some five centuries later. Chapters dealing with political and social history are interspersed with chapters on philosophy and the arts, including Homer, Greek myth, Aristotle, and Plato, Greek dramatists such as Sophocles and Aristophanes, and the flourishing of the visual and plastic arts. This volume, first published as part of The Oxford History of the Classical World, includes illustrations, maps, a Chronology of Events, and suggestions for Further Reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73723 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 520 pages

About the Author
John Boardman is Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology and Art, Lincoln College, Oxford.
Dr Oswyn Murray is Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Baliol College, Oxford.
Dr Jasper Griffin is Tutor in Ancient History at Baliol College, Oxford.

Customer Reviews

Clear and concise - this book does what it sets out to.
I bought this book because I did a Classics degree, and then forgot everything about it. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the Greek world through a well-written and well-regarded medium that wouldn't make my head hurt after a hard day at work.

The book itself is very well designed, arranged in sections that follow loosely a chronological order. Rather than aiming to give the reader a dry run-through of every significant event in Greek history, the book aims to provide its reader with an insight into, and an understanding of, the most important features of Greek history and culture. All the time, however, the chronological structure provides one with a sense of progression and development, and also prevents the reader with no prior knowledge of the period from becoming confused as to where everything fits in.

I don't honestly feel that any topic has been overlooked or neglected in the creation of this book. Greek history is a vast and absorbing topic - this book is concise and relatively short, so inevitably the reader comes away feeling that there is a great deal more that he/she would like to find out. Each section provides details of further reading to help with this. There is also a detailed time-line of events and some good maps, which contribute to the books usefulness as a reference tool.

The contributors are eminent academics who specialise in the areas that they discuss in the book. More importantly the contributors are not all the same type of academic and the different tones of their analyes are conveyed, though not over-poweringly, in their sections. Each topic is fairly treated with due consideration given to the most prevalent schools of thought in that area.

All in all I would say that this is an excellent book, practically and professionally conceived and created. It will provide the intelligent reader, with or without any classical knowlege, with a lucid treatment of the Greek and Hellenistic world, and make itself useful again and again as a basic reference tool.

Bit of a mix...
This book is a collection of chapters from various historians pulled together in one book that covers the Heroic Age through to the Hellenistic world (a long time)! Most of the authors are easy to read and write in a way where the average reader can get a lot from them, however, some are not as good. This book is probably recommended to somebody who has read a few books on the Greeks before, since many of the terms are not explained (it is assumed the reader already knows). A good book to expand previous knowledge on the Ancient Greeks.

Terrible new version
This books is printed on ugly brown pulp, and has most of the rare and ancient photos of the original edition missing. The photos in this edition are a fraction of what appear in the original, they are smaller, low in quality and contrast and all squeezed into the middle of the book instead of throughout the book. Truly aweful. Horrible.