The Rise of the Greeks - Softcover

Grant, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1898800472 ISBN 13: 9781898800477

Publisher: Phoenix Press, 2005

Synopsis

In this challenging book Michael Grant sets out to discover the extraordinary epoch between 1000 and 494 BC, a period which he shows was one of the most creative in history. He takes the reader on an intriguing detective trail to understand the world of the early Greeks, a people who are to be found not only within the boundaries of modern Greece, but also in parts of Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily and Russia, scattered in hundreds of independent city-states, united by common blood, customs, language and religion. Michael Grant discusses the economic and social roles of slaves and women, then seen as mysterious, polluting elements in these male-dominated societies, in curious contrast to their powerful role in mythology and literature. In a civilization where leisure was thought to be 'more desirable and more fully an end than business', there was thought to be 'more desirable and more fully an end than business', there was time for outstanding artistic and intellectual developments, notably the pottery of Protogeometric and subsequent epochs and the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet (after half a millennium of illiteracy) which enabled Homer's Illiad and Odyssey to be recorded.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1898800472
• ISBN 13: 9781898800477
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 391