A history of ancient Greece in fifty lives
Title:
A history of ancient Greece in fifty lives
Author:
ISBN:
9780500252055
Physical Description:
288 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm
Contents:
History and identity in the ancient Greek world -- 1. Of gods and heroes : Hesiod and Homer: the birth of the gods and the ages of man ; Homer and the beginnings of biography ; The Logographoi and the stirrings of historiography -- 2. The age of tyrants : Peisistratus (?c. 605-528) tyrannos of Athens ; Polycrates (?-522) tyrannos of Samos ; Sappho (post 630-c. 570) lyric poet ; Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 485) philosopher, mystic and mathematician ; Milo (c. 555-?) wrestler and general ; Hippias (?-490) tyrannos of Athens ; Cleisthenes (570-?507) democratic reformer ; Histiaeus (?-?494) tyranos of Miletus ; Miliades (c. 554-489) tyrannnos and general -- 3. Greece in peril : Cimon (c. 510-450) politician and general ; Themistocles (524-459) politician and general ; Leonidas (c. 540-480) Spartan king ; Gelon (?-478) tyrannos of Syracuse ; Hieron (?-467) tyrannos of Syracuse ; Pindar (c. 522-c. 442) lyric poet ; Aeschylus (525/4-456/5) tragic playwright -- 4. The age of Pericles : Pericles (495-429) statesman and general ; Herodotus (c. 484-?420s) historian ; Sophocles (497/6-405) tragic playwright and politician ; Empedocles (c. 495-?) philosopher and mystic ; Protagoras (490-420) philosopher ; Pheidias (c. 480-c. 430) sculptor ; Aspasia (c. 470-c. 400) intellectual.
5. World war : Alcibiades (450-404) politician and general ; Cleon (?-422) politician and general ; Thucydides (c. 455-c. 395) general and historian ; Aristophanes (c. 446-c. 386) comic playwright ; Euripides (c. 485-406) tragic playwright ; Zeuxis (?460-?) artist ; Gorgias (485-380) philosopher and rhetorician ; Socrates (?469-399) philosopher -- 6. Fallout : Xenophon (c. 430-c. 354) general, historian, literary innovator ; Lysander (?-395) Spartan general ; Epaminondas (c. 418-362) Theban general ; Lysias (445-380) orator and speech-writer ; Demosthenes (384-322) orator and politician ; Plato (c. 427-348/7) philosopher ; Aristotle (385/4-322) philosopher -- 7. The age of the dynasts : Alexander III (356-323) king and conqueror ; Ptolemy I (367-283) general and dynast ; Demetrius of Phalerum (c. 347-c. 283) governor of Athens and scholar ; Menander (342-291) comic playwright ; Apelles (pre 360-?c. 295) artist ; Epicurus (341-270) philosopher -- 8. In the shadow of Rome : Pyrrhus of Epirus (319-272) king and general ; Apollonius of Rhodes (pre 270-?235) poet and scholar ; Archimedes (c. 287-212) mathematician and inventor ; Attalus I (269-197) king and general ; Philopoemen (253-183) statesman and general ; Polybius (200-118) politician and historian -- 9. Lives in a mirror -- Maps -- Glossary -- Timeline -- Who's who -- Further reading.
Summary:
The political leaders, writers, artists and philosophers of ancient Greece turned a small group of city states into a pan-Mediterranean civilization, whose legacy can be found everywhere today. But who were these people, what do we know of their lives and how did they interact with one another? In this new history of Greece, David Stuttard takes an original approach, weaving together the lives of the movers and shakers of the Greek world into a continuous narrative, from the early tyrant rulers Peisistratus and Polycrates, through the stirrings of democracy under Cleisthenes to the emergence of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great and the eventual decline of the Greek world with the rise of Rome.
