This book introduces the reader to the serious study of Greek history, concentrating more on problems than on narrative. The topics selected have been prominent in modern research and references to important discussions of these have been provided. Outlined are controversial issues of which differing views can be defended. Mr. Sealey's preference is for interpretations which see Greek history as the interaction of personalities, rather than for those which see it as a struggle for economic classes or of abstract ideas. Sealey assumes that the Greek cities of the archaic and classical periods did not inherit any political institutions from the Bronze Age; that the extensive invasions that brought Mycenaean civilization to an end destroyed political habits as effectively as stone palaces. Accordingly, he believes that the Greeks of the historic period were engaged in the fundamental enterprise of building organized society out of nothing. The first chapters of this work deal with the stops taken by the early tyrants, in Sparta and Athens, toward constructing stable organs of authority and of political expression. In later chapters, interest shifts to relations that developed between the states and especially to the development of lasting alliances. Attention is given to the Peloponnesian League, to the Persian Wars, to the Delian League, and to the Second Athenian Sea League of the fourth century.

A well-grounded study of the Greek contribution to law

An accessible introduction to the polis (plural: poleis), or ancient Greek city-state. Mogens Herman Hansen addresses such topics as the emergence of the polis, its size and population, and its political culture, ranging from famous poleis such as Athens and Sparta through more than 1,000 known examples.

Covers the period which begins with the era of Greek colonization and ends with the close of the Peloponnesian War in 404 B. C.

Political activity and political thinking began in the cities and other states of ancient Greece, and terms such as tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy and politics itself are Greek words for concepts first discussed in Greece. Rhodes presents in translation a selection of texts illustrating the formal mechanisms and informal workings of the Greek states in all their variety. From the states described by Homer out of which the classical Greeks believed their states had developed, through the archaic period which saw the rise and fall of tyrants and the gradual broadening of citizen bodies, to the classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries, Rhodes also looks beyond that to the Hellenistic and Roman periods in which the Greeks tried to preserve their way of life in a world of great powers. For this second edition the book has been thoroughly revised and three new chapters added.

The period from 1200 BC onwards saw vast changes in every aspect of life on both the Greek mainland and islands as monarchies disappeared and were replaced by aristocratic rule and a new form of community developed: the city-state. Alongside these changes a new style of warfare developed which was to be the determining factor in land warfare in Greece until the defeat of the Greek city-state by the might of Macedonia at Chaeronea in 338 BC. This mode of warfare was based on a group of heavily armed infantrymen organized in a phalanx formation – the classic hoplite formation – and remained the system throughout the classical Greek period. This new title details this pivotal period that saw the transition from the Bronze Age warriors of Homer to the origins of the men who fought the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.

The Greek World After Alexander 323–30 BC examines social changes in the old and new cities of the Greek world and in the new post-Alexandrian kingdoms. An appraisal of the momentous military and political changes after the era of Alexander, this book considers developments in literature, religion, philosophy, and science, and establishes how far they are presented as radical departures from the culture of Classical Greece or were continuous developments from it. Graham Shipley explores the culture of the Hellenistic world in the context of the social divisions between an educated elite and a general population at once more mobile and less involved in the political life of the Greek city.