Synopses & Reviews
Widely acknowledged as the most authoritative Victorian study of ancient Greece, George Grote's twelve-volume work, begun in 1846, established the view of Greek history which still prevails in textbooks and popular accounts of the ancient world today. Grote employs direct and clear language to take the reader from the earliest times of legendary Greece to the death of Alexander and his generation, drawing upon epic poetry and legend, and examining the growth and decline of the Athenian democracy. The work explains Greek political constitutions and philosophy, and interwoven throughout are the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. Volume 1 focuses on the legendary Greece, the times of epic poetry and legend, and explains how what we read today as myth was once, as Grote describes it, 'accredited history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past time'.
Synopsis
Grote's classic twelve-volume work established the shape of Greek history which prevails in accounts of the ancient world today.
Synopsis
One of the classic works of historical interpretation and scholarship, Grote's voluminous history of Greece remains required reading for historians and students of ancient Greece. Drawing upon Greek politics, philosophy, poetry and oratory, Grote takes the reader from legendary Greece to the death of Alexander the Great and his generation.
Table of Contents
Preface; Part I. Legendary Greece: 1. Legends respecting the gods; 2. Legends relating to heroes and men; 3. Legend of the Iapetids; 4. Heroic legends; 5. Deucalion, Hellen, and the sons of Hellen; 6. The Aeolids; 7. The Pelopids; 8. Laconian and Messenian genealogies; 9. Arcadian genealogy; 10. Aeacus and his descendants; 11. Attic legends and genealogies; 12. Cretan legends; 13. Argonautic expedition; 14. Legends of Thebes; 15. Legend of Troy; 16. Grecian myths, as understood, felt and interpreted by the Greeks themselves; 17. The Grecian mythical vein compared with that of modern Europe.