Greeks : History, Culture, and Society (06 - Old Edition)

Organized chronologically, this book presents a complete picture of Greek civilization as a history. It features sections on the art, architecture, literature, and thought of each period. Names and dates are provided, and cultural achievements and social transformations that accompanied the cascade of historical events are carefully examined. This comprehensive, balanced treatment of ancient Greece covers its history from the prehistoric through the Mycenaean Period, the Dark Ages, the Classical Period, the Hellenistic, and the absorption of Greek culture by Rome.

Ian Morris is the Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and Professor of History at Stanford University, where he teaches large lecture courses on ancient empires and Greek history. He is either the author or the editor of nine books on ancient history and archaeology, and directs a major archaeological excavation in Sicily. His latest book, Why the West Rules … For Now will appear in 2010. He has lectured at universities across America and Europe, and r appeared on television on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and A&E Channel.

Barry B. Powell is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where in his long career he was well known as a teacher of large lecture classes in ancient civilization and myth and for seminars on Homer. He has lectured in many countries and is the author of the bestselling Classical Myth (6^th edition, 2008), widely used in college courses. He is best known as the author of Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (1991), which argues that the Greek alphabet was invented in order to record the poems of Homer. With Ian Morris he published the internationally admired A New Companion to Homer (1997). The 2^nd edition of his popular introductory text Homer appeared in 2007, and he has written numerous other books, articles, screenplays, a novel, poetry, and a mock-epic The War at Troy: A True History (2006). He Recently, he appeared on the History Channel special Troy: The True Story (2005). His study Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization (2008) establishes a scientific terminology for studying the history of writing.

 1. Introduction: A Small, Far-Off Land.

 2. The Foundations of Greek Life.

 3. The Greeks before History: 10,000-700 BC.

 4. Homer.

 5. Religion and Myth.

 6. Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment, 700-480 BC.

 7. A Tale of Two Archaic Cities: Sparta and Athens, 700-480 BC.

 8. The Crisis of 480 BC: Persia, Carthage, and the Greeks.

 9. Democracy, Empire, and Culture: Athens and Syracuse, 479-431 BC.

10. The Peloponnesian War and Its Aftermath, 431-399 BC.

11. The Greeks between Persia and Carthage, 399-360 BC.

12. The Macedonians, 359-323 BC.

13. The Hellenistic Century, 323-220 BC.

14. Hellenistic Culture, 323-30 BC.

15. The Coming of Rome, 220-30 BC.

16. Conclusions.