Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens PDF Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198727887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
A fascinating, accessible, and up-to-date history of the Ancient Greeks. Covering the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, and centred around the disunity of the Greeks, their underlying cultural unity, and their eventual political unification.

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens PDF Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198727887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
A fascinating, accessible, and up-to-date history of the Ancient Greeks. Covering the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, and centred around the disunity of the Greeks, their underlying cultural unity, and their eventual political unification.

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens PDF Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019023430X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Covering roughly eight centuries from the age of Homer (8th century BC) to the end of the Hellenistic period (late first century BC), this book will provide general readers with a comprehensive and accessible narrative history of ancient Greece.

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens

Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens PDF Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191043761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
'WE GREEKS ARE ONE IN BLOOD AND ONE IN LANGUAGE; WE HAVE TEMPLES TO THE GODS AND RELIGIOUS RITES IN COMMON, AND A COMMON WAY OF LIFE.' So the fifth-century historian Herodotus has the Athenians declare, in explanation of why they would never betray their fellow Greeks to their 'barbarian' Persian enemy. And he could easily have added other common features to this list, such as clothing, culinary traditions, and political institutions. But if the Greeks understood their kinship to one another, why did so many of them fight for the invading Persians? And why, more generally, is ancient Greek history so often one of internecine wars and other, less violent forms of competition? This extraordinary contradiction is the central theme of Robin Waterfield's magisterial new history of ancient Greece. From their emergence in the Mediterranean around 750 BCE to the Roman conquest of the last of the Greco-Macedonian kingdoms in 30 BCE, this is the complete story of the ancient Greeks. Equal weight is given to all eras of Greek history-the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods-and to the celebrated figures who shaped it, from Solon and Pericles to Alexander and Cleopatra. In addition, by incorporating the most recent scholarship in classical history and archaeology, the book provides fascinating insights into Greek law, religion, philosophy, drama, and the role of women and slaves in ancient Greek society. A brilliant account of a remarkable civilization, Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens presents a comprehensive and compelling portrait of the perennial paradox of ancient Greece: political disunity combined with underlying cultural solidarity.

Why Socrates Died

Why Socrates Died PDF Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Emblem Editions
ISBN: 0771088639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A revisionist account of the most famous trial and execution in Western civilization — one with great resonance for modern society In the spring of 399 BCE, the elderly philosopher Socrates stood trial in his native Athens. The court was packed, and after being found guilty by his peers, Socrates died by drinking a cup of poison hemlock, his execution a defining moment in ancient civilization. Yet time has transmuted the facts into a fable. Aware of these myths, Robin Waterfield has examined the actual Greek sources, presenting a new Socrates, not an atheist or guru of a weird sect, but a deeply moral thinker, whose convictions stood in stark relief to those of his former disciple, Alcibiades, the hawkish and self-serving military leader. Refusing to surrender his beliefs even in the face of death, Socrates, as Waterfield reveals, was determined to save a morally decayed country that was tearing itself apart. Why Socrates Died is then not only a powerful revisionist book, but a work whose insights translate clearly from ancient Athens to the present day.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

Phoenix

Phoenix PDF Author: David Stuttard
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674988272
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world. When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years before its zenith, Athens was just another Greek city-state in the shadow of Sparta. It would take a catastrophe, the Persian invasions, to push Athens to the fore. In Phoenix, David Stuttard traces Athens’s rise through the lives of two men who spearheaded resistance to Persia: Miltiades, hero of the Battle of Marathon, and his son Cimon, Athens’s dominant leader before Pericles. Miltiades’s career was checkered. An Athenian provincial overlord forced into Persian vassalage, he joined a rebellion against the Persians then fled Great King Darius’s retaliation. Miltiades would later die in prison. But before that, he led Athens to victory over the invading Persians at Marathon. Cimon entered history when the Persians returned; he responded by encouraging a tactical evacuation of Athens as a prelude to decisive victory at sea. Over the next decades, while Greek city-states squabbled, Athens revitalized under Cimon’s inspired leadership. The city vaulted to the head of a powerful empire and the threshold of a golden age. Cimon proved not only an able strategist and administrator but also a peacemaker, whose policies stabilized Athens’s relationship with Sparta. The period preceding Athens’s golden age is rarely described in detail. Stuttard tells the tale with narrative power and historical acumen, recreating vividly the turbulent world of the Eastern Mediterranean in one of its most decisive periods.

Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times

Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times PDF Author: Thomas R. Martin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300160054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
"First edition 1996. Updated in 2000 with new suggested readings and illustrations"--Title page verso.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome

Egypt, Greece, and Rome PDF Author: Charles Freeman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199263647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
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The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece PDF Author: Josiah Ober
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173141
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A major new history of classical Greece—how it rose, how it fell, and what we can learn from it Lord Byron described Greece as great, fallen, and immortal, a characterization more apt than he knew. Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly healthy Greeks lived in remarkably big houses and worked for high wages at specialized occupations. Middle-class spending drove sustained economic growth and classical wealth produced a stunning cultural efflorescence lasting hundreds of years. Why did Greece reach such heights in the classical period—and why only then? And how, after "the Greek miracle" had endured for centuries, did the Macedonians defeat the Greeks, seemingly bringing an end to their glory? Drawing on a massive body of newly available data and employing novel approaches to evidence, Josiah Ober offers a major new history of classical Greece and an unprecedented account of its rise and fall. Ober argues that Greece's rise was no miracle but rather the result of political breakthroughs and economic development. The extraordinary emergence of citizen-centered city-states transformed Greece into a society that defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Yet Philip and Alexander of Macedon were able to beat the Greeks in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, a victory made possible by the Macedonians' appropriation of Greek innovations. After Alexander's death, battle-hardened warlords fought ruthlessly over the remnants of his empire. But Greek cities remained populous and wealthy, their economy and culture surviving to be passed on to the Romans—and to us. A compelling narrative filled with uncanny modern parallels, this is a book for anyone interested in how great civilizations are born and die. This book is based on evidence available on a new interactive website. To learn more, please visit: http://polis.stanford.edu/.

The Scout Mindset

The Scout Mindset PDF Author: Julia Galef
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735217556
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
"...an engaging and enlightening account from which we all can benefit."—The Wall Street Journal A better way to combat knee-jerk biases and make smarter decisions, from Julia Galef, the acclaimed expert on rational decision-making. When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a "soldier" mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe—and shoot down those we don't. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a "scout" mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true. In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world—which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.