Discusses the intellectual and political developments that distinguished the country’s history from the beginnings of Minoan culture to the death of Alexander.
The influence of the Greeks on Western society has been greater and more fundamental than that of any other nation. It has touched almost every sphere, from ethics, philosophy, and politics to literature, science, aesthetics, and even language. Peter Green has written an authoritative and witty study complemented by a wide variety of illustrations of Greece during the centuries which preceded the Hellenistic age. After considering the mass of evidence which exists today to build up our picture of prehistoric Greece, Professor Green describes the culture of Minoan Crete, with its astonishing modernity; the Mycenaean civilization in homeric tradition and in historical fact; and the flowering in culture and political thought which began in the mideighth century B.c. He discusses the forces at work in the rise and fall of the polis or city state, and puts in perspective the roles of the tyrants and lawgivers, the philosophers and military commanders, the poets and sculptors. The growth of Athenian democracy, Hellenism, and the Persian Wars are all examined, together with the reversion to authoritarianism in the age which ended with the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. the concluding point of the book. Throughout, the author draws together the strands of the story into two major themes: exploration and discovery-both in a literal and a creative, intellectual sense and the Greek impulse to set the world in order, to rationalize it and to formulate abstract laws. The result richly varied but closely argued differs widely from the traditional military political narrative, giving an entertaining and informative picture of the many facets of greek culture and history in the period.